Polar Pop Opposites

We’ve had a heat wave this week with temperatures climbing near 100 degrees. You know, those days when the temperature climbs faster than your speedometer needle while driving in Oklahoma. While most folks don’t enjoy the hot temperatures, we (as we try to do here at Uncle Tommy) would like to point out a benefit of the high heat:

• If you leave a cup of coffee in your car all day, it’s still hot when you get off work. It may be even hotter! How cool is that? As a side note, a winterized version of the story (isn’t that called a polar opposite?) is when you leave your coffee in the car in the winter and end up with an iced coffee when you get back in your car at the end of the day. I’m guessing that this is maybe how iced coffee was invented.

This is how Yoohoo hot chocolate got invented too I bet. You haven’t heard of it yet but I bet it’s comin’…

The Impossible Bad Dream

So yeah, Joey Chestnut has been banned from the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest on the Fourth of July at Coney Island. This happened because Joey had signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods which apparently makes a plant based hot dog.

Nathan’s had no choice but to ban him. If Joey had lost the contest this year, people would say that it was because he prefers the Impossible dogs. Nathan’s couldn’t take that risk.  I suppose Impossible could have their own contest. But what if Joey doesn’t win that contest? Then what?

It’s pretty simple. Joey, you ruined it for yourself and for all of us. As to your future, you may be reduced to competing at poorly lighted barnstorming events as a carnival geek or maybe hanging out at buffets and challenging people to eating contests. And the all you can eat crab legs at Red Lobster is no longer an option Joe. 

Say it ain’t so, Joey. Say it ain’t so.

Double Play

Yesterday was Double Day. 6/12/24. This only happens once every 4 years or so. The 6 is half of 12 and 12 is half of 24.  I suppose it could be called “half day”. If it was half day, people would ask what the other half was. “Was it half night? One of them eclipses?” they would ask…

It’s nice that this Double Day occurred during the baseball season since Abner Doubleday is credited with inventing the game of baseball. (So I guess it’s fair to say that he invented the double also.) Doubleday was also a decorated Union officer in the Civil War and he later invented the cable car of all things, in San Francisco. In short, he was a great American. (I was not able to confirm that there was ever a double wide cable car, however. Or double decker.)

Do you think baseball could schedule some double headers to honor Mr. Doubleday on Double Day? Is that asking too much? C’mon! 

 

The Governor

I rented a truck yesterday to move some stuff. The rental guy said the truck had a governor on it limiting the top speed on the truck to 75 mph. Having recently driven through Oklahoma, I reminded him that the speed limit there was 80. We laughed. He said that you’d have to go over 90 to get a ticket there. I said that I didn’t know if radar even went that high. He assured me that it did, that in fact that he’d been pulled over going 92 on his Harley.

He said that, incredibly, the patrolman gave him a “walk”, a warning. No ticket! I of course thought that was amazing. He said the key to the “walk” was their shared love of Ted Nugent music. I told him I’d put that in my memory bank and talk about Ted next time I got pulled over.

They put those governors on the trucks so it takes you longer to get to your destination and you have to rent the truck longer. C’mon. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out!

Just Desserts

Hot dog champion Joey Chestnut was in town again last week in an ice cream eating contest at a local baseball game. He was at the game seeing how many pints of ice cream he could eat in 2 minutes. The guy deserves some dessert after so many hot dogs. When he flies into town, does he get the same snack on the plane that the rest of us get? Or does he get like 89 cookies and eats them really fast while the flight attendant is standing there? How would you like to be the girl scout who gets to sell him cookies?

Joey looks good. The man is not fat. I’m not sure how he does it. As a competitor, will he eventually earn senior status? I’d like to see some senior eating contests. Plates of liver and onions, beets, cottage cheese, three bean salad, stuff like that. Elderberry pie.

They’d have to have the contest at 4PM of course…

Tee Party

We used to have to speak in code around our dog Coco. She knew her name and if we wanted to talk about her in front of her we’d say her name backward, or “OckOck” She never figured it out.

We had people over yesterday and I couldn’t remember if my wife had reloaded the downstairs bathroom with toilet tissue. It’s awkward when you have guests over and you have to ask that. So I worked out a code, much like what we had done with Coco decades ago.  TP is the standard code for toilet tissue, but everybody knows that, so it’s not much of code. So we morphed from TP to "wigwam". So far it’s working.

I wrote a piece a while back about Chief White Cloud of the Iowa People in the mid-1700’s. (Yeah, I did!) It never occurred to me that Chief White Cloud must have lived in a tee-pee.  How weird is that?