Tom McMahon

16 Ryans

16 Ryans

Have You Ever Searched Your Own Name On The Internet To See What Would Pop Up?

An excerpt from science fiction writer Michael Burstein:

I imagine it wouldn't surprise the people who know me that I have done this numerous times. When you write fiction, you tend to want to see what sort of public picture you're creating on the Internet.

But I've also run searches on my name to find other Michael Bursteins out there. I'm not sure why I've done this, although I always felt an odd sort of identification with the others who share my name. For example, I'm a fan of the Israeli actor and singer Mike Burstyn because we share a name. (Burstyn's original name was Michael Burstein; I believe he changed the spelling for his career, since it was easier to fit on a marquee.) I make a point of seeing Burstyn perform whenever I can.

Burstein is not a common name, and my father used to tell me that there was a time when the only Bursteins in the Manhattan phone book were our family. I tended to think that there weren't too many other Bursteins out there. But with the rise of the Internet, I've found many others. Including other Michael Bursteins.

Why I am sharing this? Because today's New York Times has an interesting article on the topic of finding people with your own name: Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet by Stephanie Rosenbloom. I'm apparently not the only person who's done this. In fact, according to the article, a writer named Angela Shelton has just published a book about meeting 40 other women with her same name. The article also notes why we might feel an odd kinship with someone who shares our name – social psychologist Brett Pelham has done studies that show that our names, and the letters within them, are influential in our lives.

To answer the question: Yes, I do this every day, and just partly to see who is linking/talking about me. Mostly, tho, because there are so many guys out there named Tom McMahon. There's Tom McMahon the Actor, Tom McMahon the Canadian Musician, Tom McMahon the Kids & Family Newspaper Columnist, and Tom McMahon the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, just to name a few. 

Bloggers: The 20 Percent Theory

From Christian Schneider:

Before the afternoon session, I chatted with Owen Robinson, Fred Dooley, Tom McMahon, and Pete Fanning for a little bit. All really nice guys - but it proved my “20% theory” with regard to blogs. That is, any time a blogger posts a picture of themselves on their profile, they are always 20% thinner in the photo than they are in real life. Myself included. Sadly,Tom is having difficulty finding a hat like the one he’s wearing in his photo - if anyone can help him find one, it would be much appreciated.

At least he didn't mention that all photos are at least 10 years old too.

The Tribute Of The Cows

The Tribute Of The Cows

My Grandpa Hub was a dairy farmer for many years (that's why he's holding a glass of milk in this photo with the Lone Ranger). His farm was right next to the cemetery, so when the cemetery needed to expand (insert the standard "because people were just dyin' to get in" line) my Grandpa sold them four acres with the provision that his family got a few burial plots in the deal. So my Grandpa and Grandma, my Uncle Max, my cousin Terry, and my Mom are all buried in the cemetery right next to the old family farm. When my Grandpa Hub was buried in 1969, all the cows came over by the gravesite and stuck their heads over the fence. The tribute of the cows.

A Big Thank You To Everybody!

A Big Thank You To Everybody!

Big, big thanks to everybody who sent well wishes during my wife's recent illness and the death of my Mom. I'll never forget your kindness.

Just One Of Those Thanksgivings, Part 3

An update on how my Thanksgiving is going this year:

1. My 80-year-old Mom is still hanging on by a thread. I guess it should be no surprise that a woman of the Greatest Generation who survived the Depression, World War II, and raising two Baby Boomers would not go gentle into that good night.
2. To make a long story short, my wife is still in Intensive Care because she developed a blood clot in her lung. Things seem to be settling down now, and she's feeling better. Probably at least a couple more days before she's home. Her heart seems to be the least of her problems now, by the way.
3. I didn't want my 82-year-old Dad down in Illinois to find out (and thus worry) about my wife's heart attack, but I figured I was OK blogging about it (he can't see well enough to read). Well, even though he's quite hard-of-hearing and mostly a life-long WGN listener, he happened to catch Charlie Sykes talking about it on the radio. OOPS! Hasn't every Leave It To Beaver episode we've watched over the past 50 years taught us not to try to keep secrets from our parents? Well take it from me, it still applies when they're 80 years old, too.
4. Stats-wise, the Coexist bumper sticker brouhaha has faded away. This past weekend my two biggest posts were If I Ever Got To Be Really Really Rich Here's One Of The Things I'd Want To Do (thanks to Hanan Levin of Grow-A-Brain) and The Blues Name Generator: To Sing The Blues, You Need To Know Your Blues Name (thanks to John at the J-Walk Blog). So what's your Blues Name?

Just One Of Those Thanksgivings, Part 2

The other side to Just One Of Those Thanksgivings, Part 1:

1. While it's not easy for the rest of us, isn't dying in your bed at home after a short illness when you're 80 a pretty good way to go, all things considered?
2. My wife's getting better, and it could have been lots worse. Probably home on Thursday.
3. Lots of options besides insulin these days.
4. He's getting a new wheelchair soon. Gonna see if they can add an armrest to the old one in the meantime.
5. He was hungry. Spaghetti.
6. Maybe I'll get hundreds of thousands of new visitors from the Interfaith Conference and they'll all find the Google Ads so fascinating that they'll click on each one.

And The Big One: We have friends to help us out. My Dad has folks helping him right now, and some friends up here bought us a complete Thanksgiving Dinner for the family, and all we have to do is to pick it up at Sentry. And then eat it while we watch the 9-1 Packers play Detroit. Lots to be thankful for, indeed.

Just One Of Those Thanksgivings, Part 1

When it rains, it pours, etc etc etc. Here's how my Thanksgiving is going this year:

1. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, my 80-year-old Mom is literally on her deathbed at my parents' home in Illinois, there with my hard-of-hearing hard-of-seeing Greatest Generation World War II Wounded Veteran Father.
2. This past Saturday my wife sufferred a heart attack and is in Intensive Care in the hospital.
3. My blood sugar was too high, so I'm starting on yet another prescription medication.
4. My wheelchair-bound handicapped son can't go to his daycare because the bus transport company says he needs another armrest on his wheelchair. Now this wheelchair has only ever had one armrest since it was built, but only right now it has become an issue.
5. The aforementioned wheelchair-bound handicapped son has had trouble getting to sleep the past couple of nights. Since he can't talk, it's hard to know exactly why. Maybe he misses his Mom.
6. And now to top it all off, I've got the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee mad at me for the Coexist bumper sticker parody. You can read all about it over at Charlie Sykes' blog.

So how's your Thanksgiving going?

While I'd love to answer all the charges raised by the Interfaith Conference, I'll have to leave most of the heavy lifting to Charlie and my fellow travelers. But I would like to raise just one point.

Groups like the Interfaith Conference and people such as those who put Coexist bumper stickers on their cars are always telling us we must engage in "meaningful dialog" with our adversaries. It just so happens that my blog has a comments feature (as does Charlie's blog) which allows such dialog to occur. As I write this, my Coexist post has had 23 comments added to it. Some people agree with me, some don't. It's pretty easy to get started adding your comments. All you need to do is to write something like this:

Hey Tom, I really think you're full of crap here.

And go ahead and add your reasons for thinking so, if you want. I don't delete comments just for disagreeing with me. But you might want to be prepared to defend your position against other commenters who will disagree with you. You can respond to their responses, and so on and on until everybody's had their say. Good old Town Hall America give-and-take. Democracy at its best. America at its best. Coexisting at its best. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

The Time I Almost Drowned

Tim Rock 4-Block

No much to tell, really, so I will recount this at great length. Late in his life my Grandpa Ryan -- we all called him Grandpa Hub, a short version of his middle name -- took up trout fishing. (Side Note: Here's a picture of him with The Lone Ranger himself, Clayton Moore.) I was about 8 or 9 years old, I think, and we were all with him trout fishing at Bennett Springs, Missouri. I was out in the stream, trout fishing with my hip waders on, when I stepped into a hole. All of a sudden my hip waders started filling with water, and I went under. It all happened so fast. I swallowed some water, but lucky for me my Dad was right there and yanked me out of the water. It all happened so quickly I never got scared, I was just embarrassed that I needed to be rescued and that my Grandpa's fishing pole had gotten its tip broken. The whole incident was quickly forgotten, although my feelings of embarrassment would come back whenever I would see my Grandpa's fishing pole with that broken tip in the trunk of his car.

I hardly ever think about that incident, but when Tim Rock mentioned he nearly drowned, it triggered my memory back to that time.  Great 4-Block he did, don't you think?

UPDATE 4/14/2008: Tim and I now have something else in common: an irregular heartbeat. Tim's a newbie at this, while mine is all better now due to this.

Remembering The Women Of The Greatest Generation

My Mom's now at home from the hospital under hospice care, and the time that once was measured in years and months is now measured in days and hours. Funny how that makes thoughts pop into your head that somehow you never had before. Mom was born in 1927, a few weeks after Lindy showed the world how Lucky he really was by landing safely in Paris. Babe Ruth was in the process of hitting his 60 home runs that year. As for the rest of what happened in 1927, you can go look that up online.

Mom grew up in a farm house that borders the cemetary where she will be buried. A typical family farm of that generation that is no more. Oh, the house is still there (barely), and the barn is still sturdy and standing, and the concrete silo erected just before my uncle left farming could be there for another 500 years, who knows? She grew up in the 1930's, and graduated from high school in 1945. She married my Dad in 1948. 59 years, but not 60. In 1998 they sailed to England on the QE II for their 50th anniversary. Flew back on the Concorde. If you asked me to name three people who have flown faster than the speed of sound, they would be 1. Chuck Yeager, 2. Mom, and 3. Dad.

Dad graduated from high school in 1943, was wounded in the Pacific in 1944, and was discharged from the Army in 1945. At the last minute we finally began honoring men like my Dad, the men of the Greatest Generation, but still even now we never think to honor the gals like my Mom who waited patiently for their guys to come home. Typical high school sweethearts. Waiting at home. Somehows it never occurs to us to honor that waiting. And the homecoming. And the getting things back to normal after the war. Like I said, I never thought about this before either.

And for some, the waiting never ended. My Mom's brother married a woman whose first husband was killed in Normandy, a couple of days after D-Day. He's still over there, under one of those thousands of crosses dotting the French countryside. His struggle ended in 1944, when my aunt's struggle began. The widows, they muddled through, and built a new life as best they could. But we never thought to honor that struggle.

Maybe on Veterans' Day we should stop for an extra moment and remember the Women of the Greatest Generation as well. Wherever they are, I'm sure their fellows won't mind.

UPDATE: My Mom passed away at home in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 2, 2007.

Hi Mom!!!

And go ahead and leave a get-well message for my Mom in the comments while she's in the hospital.

My Dinner With Neidermeyer

My Dinner With Neidermeyer

Last night I went out to dinner in Mequon at Mark Metcalf's restaurant, Libby Montana, with my old Belvidere high School classmate Jeff Berg. Great food, by the way. I got a chance to chat with Mark for a few minutes -- in real life he's the polar opposite of the Animal House publicity photo above. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this will be the highlight of my week.

Read This Jena 6 Story in USA Today

It's right here. It was written by Abbey Brown, daughter of my high school friend Jeff Brown, with whom I've been arguing politics on and off for the last 40 years. Congratulations to the proud Dad and daughter Abbey!

A Post For Fans Of Veteran Film and TV Actor Richard Yniguez

A Post For Fans Of Veteran Film and TV Actor Richard Yniguez

And count me as one of those fans, too. Richard's brother Rudy was one of my shipmates all those many Cold War years ago, and we were all excited when Richard had a starring role in the 1975 made-for-TV The Deadly Tower. Kurt Russell used this movie to break out of his Disney The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes phase, portraying America's Favorite Sniper, Charles Whitman. Richard portrayed Officer Ramiro Martinez, the Hispanic cop who killed Whitman, back when Hispanics didn't have all that many starring roles. Throw in John Forsythe, Ned Beatty, and Pernell Roberts and what more could you ask for? Too bad it's not on DVD yet.

Good Things About Milwaukee And The Irony Of It All

Right now as I write this, if you Google good things about Milwaukee my 50 Things post pops up on the top of the list. Neat, eh? And here's the irony: It wouldn't have happened without my new blogbuddy Xoff stopping by to leave such a nice comment! Such are the sweet little joys of blogging on a perfect Wisconsin summer day. It's yet another one of those good things about Milwaukee.

Congratulations To KXOK's Ray Otis On His Induction In The St. Louis Radio Hall of Fame

Congratulations To KXOK's Ray Otis On His Induction In The St. Louis Radio Hall of Fame

Back when he was on the air in St. Louis, my brother Tim used to mow his lawn. And while KXOK is long gone, Ray Otis is still very much around. Ray's granddaughter Michelle Oddis recently wrote about her Grandpa:

The young Ray Otis was only 24 when he started working in the St. Louis radio scene. The year was 1962. He was married with three children. It was Mothers Day weekend and my grandfather was traveling from Cleveland to St. Louis to visit his mom. The management at the current radio station he worked at expected him to be in a meeting on that specific Mothers day. After a small dispute consequently my grandfather left his disk jockeying job there. (For those of us who only know iPods, music came on disks -- records -- before tapes and then CCs. The guys who hosted radio shows were called “disk jockeys.”) That same weekend in St. Louis was the first time my grandfather heard KXOK radio.

In St. Louis “the God’s were good” he said, and he landed a job KXOK. He was host of the morning show for only a short time before it became the top morning show in the market. He was the first disk jockey ever to have a city mayor on the air regularly. St. Louis Mayor A.J. Cervantes would call in every morning and talk about what was happening in the city and what his day looked like. The governor called once a week.

My grandpa even received an audition tape from a young Rush Limbaugh and was considering the possibilities of putting him on the air on weekends, but that was erased when Doc Downey showed up in St. louis and was given the weekend job. Limbaugh later went on to replace Downey on a station in Sacramento.

This Entire Blog Summarized in One Post

It's from a spam blog post "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 Tom McMahon Film by Google video porky's railroad 1937". It starts out talking about the DVD set and then seemlessly transitions to a stream-of-consciousness rendering of this blog's last 4 years. 46K in all. See how many posts you can recognize after the break . . .

50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Hey, I'm In That Book!

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50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Hey, I'm In That Book!

I'm in Rule #24. I'm not sure how exactly, or even what Rule #24 is ("24. Never wear a hat. It makes you look like an idiot.") But hey, that's all part of the fun.

My Brother Tim On The Today Show

My Brother Tim On The Today Show

The Day I Saw The Goodyear Blimp And The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile

That day was to-day! In Wisconsin, this is considered Very Good Luck. So I got that going for me, which is nice . . .

A Generation Of Entitled Children

An article by Kidtips.com parenting expert Tom McMahon:

Have you noticed the growing trend of children and teens who believe the world owes them something? They feel entitled to the good life -- preferably without any effort on their part. The recipe that leads to this self-centered attitude in children usually contains a guilt-ridden parent or two and a child who watches an average of 40,000 slick commercials each year. The children want; the parents give; the parents feel less guilty.

Here is one common scenario: Many parents -- especially mothers -- feel guilty for working long hours away from home. Some try to make it up to their children by doing and buying more and expecting less from them. Before long, they become indulgent, permissive parents; they cannot say "no" to their children. The children become self-centered and demanding. The term "spoiled brat" comes to mind. Permissive parenting seldom has a positive outcome for children.

If this issue resonates with your family, refocus your efforts by promoting what is important in life: family and friends, the values of compassion and honesty, helping others (have your kids volunteer for the sick or needy), religious beliefs, working toward an important goal, etc. Assign household chores. Listen carefully when they talk. Remember, they need your love, boundaries and discipline more than the material things you can give them.

A Tom McMahon In Springfield

Atomic Man In Springfield

My Gedunk Medal

My Gedunk Medal

When I went into the Navy during the Vietnam Era, I was awarded one of these -- The National Defense Medal. Just like everyone else, there's no way you could avoid getting one. We called them "gedunk medals", since in Navy slang a gedunk machine was a vending machine for candy bars and the like. As if you had gotten this medal out of a candy machine.  (link via J-Walk)

Dippity-Do: The Grooming Secret of Sailors in the 1970's

Dippity-Do: The Grooming Secret of Sailors in the 1970's

You simply put a boatload of this stuff in your hair during the day, enough to pass inspection. Off-duty, you'd wash it out so you would look like a civilian.

My 6,000th Post

. . . and all of them virtually pesticide-free!

My Laptop Is Broken . . .

. . . so posting may be light for the next couple of days. Luckily, being a member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy I have the full resources of Halliburton working on my problem. Let me tell you, that's real peace of mind. Not a member of the VRWC? Why not join to-day? Not only do you get the Halliburton support I just mentioned, but also free car starting and roadside assistance. And 10 free database lookups per month on persons of interest to you. Ask any Republican you know and they'll fill you in on all the details.

Cutting Corners For The Blind: A Proposal For U.S. Paper Currency

Cutting Corners For The Blind: A Proposal For U.S. Paper Currency

But not everybody likes this idea:

The vending machine industry, which has 7 million machines across the country, generally opposes changes to currency, in part because refitting machines to accept altered dollars could cost as much $400 per machine, or $2.8 billion.

The $30 billion-a-year industry also has a problem with old or ripped bills that already cost some $600 million a year. "We are very concerned that these clipped-off edges would lead to more tears and ruined currency," said Tom McMahon, chief lawyer for the National Automatic Merchandising Association, the vending machine trade group.

You see kids, it's not the Freemasons, or the Stonecutters, or even the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy that's keeping The Metric System down along with other societal improvements. It's the Tom McMahon Conspiracy. We're the ones who secretly landed on Mars and started emitting greenhouse gases there to melt the polar icecaps on that planet, just so we could discredit Al Gore.

My Experience At The Germantown Wisconsin PETCO At 5 Minutes Until Closing: The Manager On Duty Tells Me Sorry, We Will Not Sell You Those Two Large Bags Of Ferret Food Until You Move Your Van From In Front Of The Store

This is at 8:55PM tonight in a big strip mall with an almost completely empty parking lot. I pulled up in front of the store because their outside lights were already off. Ran into the store, grabbed two of the biggest bags of Marshall's ferret food they had, and ran up to the cashier. That's when the Manager on Duty told me unless I moved my van, then I could not check out. We haggled back and forth. She never did give me a reason for her insistence, other than people don't normally park there. The haggling took longer than a quick check out would have taken. I finally told the cashier to ring up one of the bags, went out, moved my van, and came back in. They rang up my one large bag on ferret food. But after they rang it up I thought "Why should I give them any more of my money than I absolutely have to?" So I told the cashier to ring up the one bag as a return because I didn't want it any more, and I ran back and got the smallest milk carton size container of ferret food that they carried. The cashier rang up the return, then rang up my $6.99 sale (versus the over $40 that the two large bags would have cost). As I was leaving the store, the staff was turning away a gentleman trying to enter the store. I told him about my experience that I had just had right there in the Germantown, Wisconsin PETCO store.

After I got home I called the PETCO Customer Relations Team at 1-888-824-PALS(7257) and told the young man my story. He said that the Store Manager, Elizabeth, would be calling me back. I'll let you know how it goes. 

And to think that all they had to do was ring up my two freakin' bags of ferret food.

UPDATE 4/5/07 9:56AM: Dan, the new PETCO Store Manager (he's been on the job 3 weeks) called and offered his sincere apologies, and indicated that he and the Manager on Duty already had had a talk about this little incident of mine.  Bottom Line: I'm OK with shopping at PETCO again. You can tell when somebody is sincere, and when they're just reading you the corporate line, and Dan struck me as quite sincere and moreover, a regular working good guy, not a corporate suit. Plus, he called me back before I expected him too. Dan's restored my faith in PETCO.

I Get My First Lawyer Letter About This Blog!

I Get My First Lawyer Letter About This Blog!

From the nice folks at the Duncan Toy Company:

Re:  Improper Use of Duncan Trademarks

Dear Sir/Madam:

Nordic Group of Companies, Ltd. is the parent company of Duncan Toys Co., a division of Flambeau, Inc. (“Flambeau”).  Flambeau is the owner of the federally registered mark, “BUTTERFLY”, # 2338639 registered April 4, 2000 (first used August, 1954).

Your website tommcmahon.net has come to our attention and we have found the descriptive use of Flambeau’s mark, “BUTTERFLY” referring to Duncan’s Butterfly® yo-yo as a shape.  While we are flattered at the use of the mark, such use is trademark infringement.  We must insist all yo-yo’s with a shape similar to Duncan’s Butterfly yo-yo be described as “Flared Gap” shaped.  The mark should not be used in a descriptive manner within any material.

Please modify your website as described above at the earliest possible time, but no later than thirty (30) days from the date of your receipt of this letter.  We appreciate your anticipated prompt assistance in correcting this trademark infringement.

Sincerely,

General Counsel

I've deleted the offending post shown above. So remember, don't use "butterfly" to refer to a yo-yo shape; use "flared gap" instead.

Four years blogging, almost 6,000 posts, and this is my first lawyer letter: I feel like a real blogger now. A Blog Mitzvah, eh?

I've Joined eMusic

J-Walk writes about it every month. $20 for 75 songs a month (other plans available). I downloaded songs by Big Kahuna And The Copa Cat Pack, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Harry James & His Orchestra, Jerry Butler, Leon Redbone, Lou Rawls, and The Spinners. One of the reasons I hadn't joined eMusic is that I thought they only had music for hippie Democrats, but they music for regular Republican folk as well. Send me an e-mail and I'll send you an invitation that qualifies you for 25 free downloads. Actually, you get 25 free downloads regardless, but if you let me send you an invitation, then I'll get 50 free downloads myself.

What A Network TV Traffic Spike Looks Like

What A Network TV Traffic Spike Looks Like

First I noticed there were a ton of hits on a 4-year-old post Why Don't Polar Bears Eat Penguins? , which was very unusual. I normally get just a few hits a day on that post. Couldn't figue out the reason. Then I turned on the tivo'd recording of the new FOX-TV show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? , and one of the questions was a True/False question asking if polar bears ate penguins. Mystery solved.

The Night I Saw Hank Aaron Hit Home Run Number 756

The Night I Saw Hank Aaron Hit Home Run Number 756

It was August 18, 1965, and I remember it like it was yesterday 40 years ago. Because of baseball's insanely detailed record-keeping, I know the game started at 8:00 PM, and there were 13,903 people there. Some sources say it was a Sportman's Park in St. Louis, but by then it was really called Busch Stadium. The old Busch Stadium, or more precisely the old old Busch Stadium. Two stadiums before the one they have there now. An August evening in St. Louis, the weather is usually hot and humid. Or humid and hot. A subtle difference to be sure, but one you could eventually pick up on if you lived there long enough. But that particular evening was quite pleasant, a great night for Fun At The Old Ballpark as Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray used to say,

We went to the game to see the Cardinals play the lame duck Milwaukee Braves. 1965 was the Braves last year in Milwaukee, but they were really messing things up by making a run for the National League pennant.  It was me, my brother Tim, our neighborhood friends Kevin and Mark O'Donnell, and Mr. O'Donnell. We were going to see Curt Simmons pitch, because Curt Simmons lived in our subdivision and we played baseball with his kids. (Not organized Little League baseball but rather the neighborhood sandlot choose-sides-by-flipping-the-bat type of baseball, the type of baseball you seldom see played any more.) Simmons had been one of the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies Whiz Kids who won the pennant that year, but now nearing the end of his career with his fastball gone, he relied on his skill and experience as a pitcher. That is to say, he threw a lot of junk. But he was still a very effective pitcher, and had helped the Cardinals win the World Series the previous year. A sort of cosmic justice you might say, because he missed the entire 1950 World Series because his National Guard unit had been activated.

Curt Simmons was about the only pitcher who had Hank Aaron baffled. Before a game one time Aaron asked one of Curt Simmons' kids, "Why can't your father throw like everyone else?"  What Aaron meant was throwing like the blazing fastballer Don Drysdale, who ended up serving 17 home runs to Aaron in his career. But to Simmons that was pure folly. He said "Trying to sneak a fastball past Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster." So he threw lots of slow, breaking stuff to Aaron. Which leads us to the Mythical Home Run 756.

Most of you know the basic details about Aaron's home runs. He first tied, and then broke, Babe Ruth's all-time home run record in April of 1974 with the now-Atlanta Braves. After the 1974 season Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he hit his 755th and last home run at Milwaukee's County Stadium on July 20, 1976.

We got a preview of Number 756 in the 6th inning. Simmons threw one ssllllowwwwwww curve ball after another to Aaron. I remember watching them and thinking "Gee, even I could hit one of those." Aaron was pouncing on them, almost cartoon-style, fouling one off after another until he flied out to center. The crowd was going nuts, it was a terrific show by two great ball players.

But all that was nothing compared to what was in store when Aaron came to bat with the score tied 3-3 in the 8th inning. The whole crowd was completely mesmerized by the show Simmons was putting on. One slow curve after another. It was almost as if he were placing the ball on a T-ball standing and daring Aaron to try to hit it. Aaron was fouling off pitch after pitch. Sometimes the baseball geeks talk about "the game within the game", and I think I could live to be 150 years old and never see a better example than what I saw that night. Finally on one pitch Aaron did kind of a hop, skip, and double shuffle, lunging at the ball and with a flick of his quick wrists, powering the ball over the right field roof. Home run 756.

But home plate umpire Chris Pelekoudas ruled that Aaron had violated rule 6.06(a), which as you know states that a batter must keep both feet within the batter's box (some say that Cardinals catcher Bob Uecker pointed this out to Pelekoudas). So instead of a home run, Aaron was ruled out. And yes, he was out of the batter's box, no doubt about it. Everyone in the park knew it. In fact, Aaron had stepped out of the batter's box on the previous at-bat, but Pelekoudas hadn't called it because he had flied out anyway.

So that's the story, pretty much. Milwaukee ended up winning the game on a 9th-inning pinch-hit home run (his only home run of the year, I might add) by a fellow from South Carolina named Don Dillard, playing in his last major league season. We could certainly understand losing a game due to a home run by Aaron, Mathews, or Torre. But Dillard? Dillard?

The next year the Cardinals moved into the new Busch Stadium, the one they just tore down. The Simmons kids moved away when their dad was traded to the Cubs. When he retired in 1967, Curt Simmons was the last major league pitcher to have played in the 1940's. And Hank Aaron still holds the career record for home runs: 755.

Super Bowl Memories

• 21 years years ago when the Bears won the Super Bowl I was working in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, right near O'Hare. All we talked about that Monday was the Bears' victory -- no work got done that day whatsoever. The following morning, Tuesday morning, the buzz was finally dying down when all of a sudden we got the news that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded. And thus ended the Super Bowl celebration.
• We moved to Milwaukee shortly thereafter. When the Packers won the Super Bowl there was no space shuttle explosion so the celebration just went on and on and on and on. Rather sickening after a while.
• For the second Brett Favre Super Bowl, the one against the Broncos, I had just flown into Paris on a business trip for UltraGlobalMegaCorp. Left on Saturday, arrived Sunday morning with the time change, and took the free day to tour Paris, going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, going to Notre Dame Cathedral, that sort of thing. So by the time the Super Bowl started at midnight, I was rather exhausted.  So I just watched the first 10 minutes of the game and went to bed.
• The game was broadcast in French: "Antonio Freeman, la reception fantastique!" was how they called his touchdown catch. Instead of commercials they ran little vingnettes on American football. They made fun of the plain hairstyles of the boucy Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders in the clip they were showing: "La coiffure Americaine!" Giggles all around.
• When I woke up and found out the Packers had lost, I was really glad I hadn't stayed up to watch the game.
• By the time I got home the next Saturday, all the whining and moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Packers fans was pretty much over. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have missed all that.

Fort Fisher Falls

Two excerpts from American Heritage:

A big break for the Union in the Civil War occurred 142 years ago today. On January 15, 1865, the U.S. Navy and Army finally took Fort Fisher, which guarded the entrance to the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. The capture deprived blockade-running merchant ships of access to Wilmington, the last major Southern seaport still in Confederate hands. Near the end of 1864, Gen. Robert E. Lee had written, “Hold Fort Fisher or I cannot subsist my army.” With provisions and matériel from abroad now completely cut off, the collapse of the Confederacy became not just inevitable but imminent. ...

Like many Civil War engagements, the Fort Fisher campaign was marked by great skill and bravery on both sides, and also by incompetence, recklessness, and venality. Victorious Union troops spent the night celebrating as the dead were removed and the wounded were cared for, and on the morning of January 16, a high-spirited group entered the fort’s main ammunition magazine, using torches to light their way. The resulting explosion may have killed as many as 200 men. And the next day a final pair of would-be blockade runners from Bermuda were captured. Their cargo, according to a history of the conflict, was “small arms, shoes, blankets, liquor, lace, silks, and the latest ladies’ hats from Paris.”

I served on the USS Fort Fisher (LSD 40) many years ago and I never knew anything about the fort for which my ship was named. But now I do. Never too late to learn, I suppose.

My Vitamins

Just to let you know I'm trying to take care of my health after being diagnosed with diabetes, I thought I'd list the nutritional supplements I take every day:

• Vitamins A, B, & C: The Basics.
• Multi-Gamma Vitamin E: My doctor told me not to take the cheap Vitamin E.
• Herbal Antioxidant Formula: Contains green tea, ginkgo, grape seed, bilberry,  rosemary, fo-ti, Siberian ginseng, hawthorn, rhodiola, curcumin, schisandra, astaxanthin, resveratrol,  Bioperine, and NAC. A pretty inexpensive formula to hedge one's bets.
• Quercetin: Another antioxidant.
• Alpha Lipoic Acid:  Probably the most highly-rated supplement for diabetics. Powder form is the cheapest.
• Acetyl-L-Carnitine: Work synergistically with the alpha lipoic acid.
• L-Carnosine: Protects against bad cross-linking of glucose which can accelerate aging, especially in diabetics.
• Fish Oil: Helps lower blood pressure.
• Evening Primrose Oil: Another "good" oil.
• Magnesium: Good for the heart and for diabetes.
• Chromium: Helps with blood sugar.
• Cinnamon: Since putting this on food is hit-or-miss with me, I take a capsule with every meal. Helps with blood sugar also.

Of course, I also take my prescriptions and eat right. And starting to get more exercise, too.

The Annual Tom McMahon Virtual Christmas Card

The Annual Tom McMahon Virtual Christmas Card

A New Roof, But No Internet!

We just got done with having a new roof put on our house, but somewhere along the way the cable connection got all messed up so we are without cable TV and an internet connection (No Phone! No Lights! No Motorcars!). Hence the lack of posts to this blog. Hopefully this will be fixed by Thursday. As for this post, I'm blogging it from a secure undisclosed location. Dick Cheney's in the next cubicle. A piece of advice: If you see him, don't make any jokes about his new son-in-law. He's not in the mood. My psychological sub-self who's still in junior high, well he thought it was funny. Can't please everybody, I suppose.

Too Dumb For The Army

Before I joined the Navy right out of high school in 1972 I had to go into Chicago to take the Armed Forces Qualifying Test which, pretty much as the name implies, determines if you are smart enough to join, voluntarily or otherwise, the Armed Forces of the United States of America. I scored a 91. An inner-city kid standing in line next to me had scored a 14, and asked me what the CAT IV stamped on his test meant. I pretended I didn't know. But in reality, I knew. Category 4. It meant he wasn't intelligent enough to join the Army during the Vietnam War. What a depressing state of affairs to contemplate. Just the first of many, many eye-openers awaiting me in the military service . . .

My Endorsement In The Race For Governor Of Wisconsin

Now that I have a chronic disease, I suppose I'm qualified to make endorsements in political races:

I endorse Mark Green for Governor of Wisconsin.

Take that, Michael J. Fox, ya little twerp . . .

Dealing With Heart Failure

Hello There Readers: Over the last few weeks I've been dealing with symptoms that all pointed to a recurrence of my heart problems: extreme tiredness, exhaustion with just minimal physical exertion, a mental fog even beyond the level that my left-wing friends think I already have, and so forth. Five years ago I had open-heart surgery to deal with these symptoms, so I was already quite familiar with the problem. I went to my doctor this past Tuesday to get a confirmation, and she scheduled me for the usual litany of lab tests and stress tests, including a echocardiogram.

Now the problem with having heart failure, at least in my case, is that there's really not a whole lot they can do for it. Oh, they can manage it, give you drugs to make it somewhat better, but it's not one of those where they give you a pill and make it all better. Kinda depressing, eh?

Well on Wednesday, the day after my doctor's appointment, even before I had a chance to take my stress tests and my echocardiogram, my doctor called with the terrific news: I didn't have heart failure. I had diabetes. A full-blown, no-doubt-about-it case of diabetes. A blood sugar level of 512, when it's supposed to be about 100.

I guess that would explain the insatiable thirst I'd been having.

In the few days since then I've gotten the usual diabetes prescriptions along with the blood tester thingee As Seen On TV. My level is already down to 248, so I expect to reach the normal level in the next couple of days. I already feel better, and look forward to improving as my blood sugar level gets down to normal.

Funny Thing that The Day I Was Diagnosed With Diabetes was one of the happiest days of my life. Well, enough about that. And now, as Casey Kasem used to say (or maybe he still says it, he's a zombie, you know), on with the countdown.

And on with the blog!

2,000,000 Hits!

Or for the too-precise-to-have-any-friends, Page Views. At any rate, I think I should bring donuts into work at good old UltraGlobalMegaCorp. "Donuts At Work": How's that for a new corporate slogan? Much better than the old slogan of We Bring Donuts To Life, which was becoming rather dated. Earth-friendly Eco-Donuts, that's where all the market growth is, my friend. We're all over it. I'm not allowed to give insider information, but I'm sure The Wise will invest accordingly.

The Path To 9/11: Tom McMahon Wants To Yank It Off The Air!

From Michael Medved:

As of this posting (Friday afternoon, 6.30 Pacific Time) the liberal campaign to censor the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11" has reached new heights of demagogic hysteria. Tom McMahon, executive director of the Democratic National Committee sent out an e-mail to supporters that began: "This is it: crunch time for getting the slanderous ABC television docudrama 'The Path to 9/11' yanked off the air. The network schedule has this slanderous attack on Democrats slated to start on Sunday night, September 10, at 8 o'colck -- and as long as it stays ont he schedule, we have work to do. Take a minute right now and tell Disney president Robert Iger to keep this right wing propaganda off the airwaves."

  Unlike Mr. McMahon and his hyperventilating Democratic colleagues, I've actually watched the miniseries in question-- in its entirety -- and there is no chance that any sane observer who bothers to sit through all five hours of this riveting presentation could ever describe it as "right wing propaganda."

The funny thing is, if you Google "Tom McMahon", I come up on top. The DNC Tom McMahon must just hate that!

A Few Small Changes To This Site

• I made the type easier to read, especially the links.
• I added a feature to the top of the weblog called Classic TM Post Of The Day. This is one of the 5000 or so old posts that I've chosen for that day. You folks who read this blog in an RSS reader won't see it in your feed.
• You can subscribe to this site via an email subscription now. Just look for the form on the sidebar and follow the directions.
• I have installed a grazr box in the sidebar for my blogroll. Just play around with it -- it's kinda fun.
• If you don't like the grazr blogroll, just click on All The TomLinks above it to get the more traditional blogroll.

Some Very Nice Words For 4-Block World!

One thing that surprises me a little is that 4-Block World gets a number of readers from non-English-speaking countries. A French-speaking blogger named Fred Reillier had some nice things to say about it recently. Now since my French is quite rusty, I ran it through the Google Toolbar Translator and got the following English result:

Contrary, 4block-world, it is a blog as I like them. A single, original, completely damaged blog even. In short, brilliant.

The idea? It is of a biblical simplicity: all the posts have the shape of a table with 4 boxes like that of the illustration. When the author (Tom McMahon is its name) has something to say, it must dig the head so that that returns in this at the same time narrow and rich form.

I believe deeply that the bottom and the form are indissociable, and I infinitely admire those which, as Tom McMahon are able to subject with insistence their thoughts (even absurd) on a form (even incongruous).

"Damaged and Brilliant": A great tag line, eh? And thank you very much, Fred!

August 27, 1979: Lord Mountbatten Killed By IRA Member Thomas McMahon

From the History Channel:

On August 27, 1979, Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed when Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists detonate a 50-pound bomb hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V. Mountbatten, a war hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland's northwest coast when the bomb exploded. Three others were killed in the attack, including Mountbatten's 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas. Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land killed 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland. ...

IRA member Thomas McMahon was later arrested and convicted of preparing and planting the bomb that destroyed Mountbatten's boat. A near-legend in the IRA, he was a leader of the IRA's notorious South Armagh Brigade, which killed more than 100 British soldiers. He was one of the first IRA members to be sent to Libya to train with detonators and timing devices and was an expert in explosives. Authorities believe the Mountbatten assassination was the work of many people, but McMahon was the only individual convicted. Sentenced to life in prison, he was released in 1998 along with other IRA and Unionist terrorists under a controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland's peace deal. McMahon claimed he had turned his back on the IRA and was becoming a carpenter.

4-Block World Gets A MetaFilter Burst!

4-Block World Gets A MetaFilter Burst!

Yes, 4-Block World got a Metafilter link yesterday, resulting in the traffic spike shown above. As I mentioned to J-Walk, I really think I'm starting to win them over! They even spelled my name right.

By the way, this is a traffic graph for just 4-Block World, and doesn't count the folks who read the 4-block on tommcmahon.net. Some people ("The Blind, The Illiterate, and The Lazy") just like to look at the diagrams.