Just an Old Fashioned Love Song

So, yeah, we stopped at the same Love’s service plaza on the way home from our trip. (See previous post.) This time they weren’t playing loud, upbeat music in the men’s room. No. And yes, I confirmed that the same music was being played in the women’s rest room. (We don’t call it “the women’s room, do we?) Their playing of different songs in the different rest rooms wasn’t gonna last, was it? I mean, this is 2025. Everything’s gotta be equal. Somebody must have told Mr. Love that women can even vote now…

Now the bad news. The song playing when we were in there was Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”. The well known lyric, “We don’t need no education” starts the song. C’mon Mr. Love. It’s the end of May, kids across the country are graduating, and we have to listen to this 46 year old warn out anti-education rant?   

Might as well change the name of the place to Hate’s, Mr. Love.

Clearwater Shower

We're taking a long Memorial Day weekend. Last Friday, we stopped for gas at a Love's truck stop plaza. It's one of those places where they make the announcement, "Number 31, your shower is ready!" And then everybody looks around to see who's going to take a shower. Well, I've not taken a shower there, but I have used the restroom. The restroom at this particular Love's has the loudest, most upbeat restroom music I've ever heard. One time I was there they were playing Traveling Band by Credence Clearwater Revival. This time they were playing something by the Ramones. Hey, whatever. It didn't affect anything I had to do in there. I kinda got a kick out of it. 

I asked my wife what she thought of the Ramones in the restroom. She noted that no, there were no Ramones on her side and that they had enjoyed a serenade by Rod Stewart. I thought to myself, "Wow! Another barrier's been crossed. Different music in the men's and women's restrooms." Is this what 2025 will be known for?

I wanted to find that #31 guy and ask him what music they played in the showers but they wouldn't let me go back there without taking a number. 

I Second that Emoji

Aren’t emoji’s great? When you don’t have time to think up a sentence, you just send an appropriate face. Here are some emoji observations:

•            I recently witnessed someone removing their heart emoji from a picture I had texted. Wait. What? Did they think I hadn’t seen the heart? I look for those hearts…
• You can put an emoji on your own post. We’ve gonna call this the memoji. Yeah. So, if someone hasn’t responded to your text, and you thought it was a really good, creative text, you can put a heart or a face or whatever on your own text.

Perhaps the best use of the memoji would be in case A above where, if someone removes their heart (hides their heart?) you can replace it with your own heart. That’s an effective way of telling the person that you know they removed their heart.

We're all about mending relationships here at Uncle Tommy.

Kentucky Rain (Keeps Fallin' Down)

We watched the muddy Kentucky Derby earlier this month. Those races are fun to watch even if you don’t know much about the horses. My favorite part is “Down the stretch they come!” After the race the winning jockey was interviewed while he was still on his horse by a female journalist who was also on a horse. (Not the same horse, of course.) It was so cool. In talking to some friends last week, apparently this practice has been around for a while.

I think this horseback interview thing needs a bigger buildup. And a sponsor. I picture a break in the post-race action where an announcer says, “And now, our horseback interview of the winning jockey! This segment sponsored by Jockey.” Sounds like a winner to me!

Did I tell you I took a marketing course in college?

Chicago Pope

I heard we have a new pope. I don’t know what his name was before he was pope but he’s gonna go by Pope Leo going forward.  Is Leo a name he had in mind for years, hoping to be able to use it if he became pope some day? Or did he choose it on the spot when he was named pope? Is there a committee to come up with the name, or does he do that on his own? Did his mother (Happy Mother's Day!)  have any input? (“Sonny, if you ever become pope, you should choose the name Leo.”)  What’s his sign? Is he a Leo? Was he born between July 23^rd and August 22^nd?  

He’s from Chicago and he’s a White Sox fan. Somebody dug up a video of Leo at the 2005 World Series. Cool.  Baseball’s most famous Leo of course was Leo Durocher. But Leo managed the crosstown Cubs, not the White Sox. Unfortunately, there just aren’t that many famous White Sox so I’ll give Leo a pass there.

I hope he doesn’t wear that tall pope hat to the games. It would be cool to sit behind the pope but I’d still want to be able to see the game.   

Papa John Drving School

We received comments from readers who wanted to know more about the driver's ed / pizza delivery concept. Can you blame them? Here's a clip from 5 years ago:

While out driving this morning I got caught in the slow lane. I could see that the car a couple of cars ahead of us had a sign on the roof. That meant it had to be one of two things: a driver’s ed car, or a pizza delivery car. That got me thinking. Since we are at full employment and it’s so hard to find workers, why not combine driver’s education and pizza delivery? Driver training requires 50 hours of supervised driving. Why not earn $10 per hour delivering pizzas while getting your hours in, kids? Yeah, the instructor (or a parent!) would have to be in the car of course. But that money Papa John or whoever pays you can be used toward the cost of the driving instruction. C’mon! This makes way too much sense.

Since there's already a service called Hello Fresh, I'm thinking of naming this Hello Soph.

Uncle Thomas Edison

 

Here are some of the inventions and innovations I’m working on:

•           Water balloon animals – Why hasn’t somebody developed this concept? We’re struggling with when to put the water in. Do you do it after the balloon animal is made or do you make the animal out of a water balloon? Our first animal will be the water buffalo…
• Bagel holes – I ran this concept by a New Yorker today who thought it was a dynamite idea.
• Driver’s Ed Pizza Delivery – I think somebody’s doing this
• Birthday “Whistle Blowing” – Whistle a pretty (preferably short) tune while you’re blowing out the candles.
• The Mapkin – Tired of showing up for that interview with ketchup on your shirt? Use a road map as a bib when you’re driving.
• Drive-Through Salad Bar – “Back up honey. I missed the garbanzo beans.”

Winging It

Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where you get the menus and the waitress gives you like 90 seconds to read the menu, and then comes back for your order, and you’re not ready? That’s rough. You never see that in restaurant reviews though.  But you see restaurant reviews all the time where the opposite happens and people say, “the hostess seated us and then no one came back to our table for 20 minutes, and there were people who got seated after us, and they got their food before we even ordered.” Just once I would like to see the restaurant response say, “Yeah, but then you got to see their food, and, more importantly, you got to see whether they enjoyed it, thereby helping you decide on what to order.”

Going back to the first scenario, sometimes I’m not ready to order but my wife is, so I say, “I’m gonna wing it”. Be careful when you say this, ‘cause I bet a lot of times when you say that they bring you chicken.