Pool Cue News and Review

So I wake up this morning, grabbed some coffee, flicked on the computer (yes, I am so sad that I hop on the computer every morning when I wake up) and saw that George Carlin died from heart failure last night.  The dude lived hard and made his mark as one of America’s truly great and original comics.  The cat was my comedic hero and was an absolute icon.  He was best known for the “Seven Words” comedy bit, but also showed up in a ton of great flicks including Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure which happens to be one of the absolute genius flicks to come out of the 80s.  If you’ve never heard the “Seven Words” bit, feel free to check out the YouTube clip below.  There are a number of different riffs he does on the bit over the years, but this one is probably one of the more famous versions.

Last week, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee released a study that links the ban on smoking in bars to an increase in drunk driving fatalities. The idea is that people need to drink and smoke so badly that they’ll drive to a city that doesn’t have a smoking ban to get their drink on and suck down a few lung bullets. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to push the need for a statewide smoking ban in Wisconsin, but the way its being reported is pretty damn irresponsible.

I get it. People dig a smoke with their beer. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Even so, is it really worth it to risk destroying your life and the lives of others? I still find it shocking that people who want a bullet with their beer don’t just stay at home. From what I’ve seen, most bars are ignoring the smoking ban anyway. They’re finding that it makes more sense for them to eat the fine, as they make more money off of the extra business to more than cover the cost of the fine.

If you want to read the article, you can find it here, but the whole thing can be summed up in this statement: “It still appears that the positive health effects of smoking bans outweigh the negative, he says, but the real conclusion is that a universal smoking ban would eliminate the danger of people trying to avoid the individual bans.”

BCA Nationals are kicking my ass, so just a quick post for today.  Check out my man Barack shootin’ some stick with the boys down in West Virginia.  Obama’s probably only going to get about 35% of the vote down there in the primaries, but you gotta give the guy an “A” for effort.  Plus, you’ve gotta like the man for throwing down some publicity for pool.  You certainly won’t see McCain or the Hillinator racking and running.

So I’m sure you’ve all seen this stupid chain letter that tells you all sorts of tips and tricks to getting more mileage from a tank of gas. Because its a chain letter, you immediately know its bullshit, but I decided to try one of the “helpful tips” anyway. Since it was the easiest to do and I’m extremely lazy, I chose the “pump gas on low speed and pump it early in the morning. Additionally, since I have no life, I knew that the driving conditions would be fairly constant. Here are the results of the test:

The first tank pumped at high speed in the afternoon got me 253.6 miles on 10.919 gallons of gas for a rate of 23.23 miles per gallon.

The second tank pumped in the early AM when it was nice and chilly at low speed got me 266.6 miles on 11.149 gallons of gas for a rate of 23.91 miles per gallon. Now my math could be wrong, but my calculation on the total savings for freezing my balls off for a few extra minutes while I let a slow stream of gas trickle into my tank was a whopping $0.31. Totally not worth the effort, but that’s ok because I just got an email from a friend telling me that Microsoft will send me $245 for every time I forward an email. I didn’t think it was real, but the guy in the email said he got $24,800 from Microsoft, so I better get clicking on that forward button…

Color me disappointed, but it looks like the latest hotly anticipated flick to feature pool isn’t going to be in the theaters long. Sony has opted to make Zombie Strippers a short run “limited engagement” and my town isn’t one of the 14 that made the cut to get distribution. I don’t know what the guys at Sony are thinking. This flick has a little bit of everything. Its got zombies, strippers, sex, gore, a secret government conspiracy and even stars Freddy Kruger himself Robert Englund as well as a newcomer by the name of Jenna Jameson. I haven’t seen any of her work, but I hear she’s got some crazy talent.

Now you might be asking yourself why I would include a clip for this movie in a billiards blog.  Well sir, I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but I’ll I can tell you is that it involves Jenna Jameson and projectile pool balls.  In answer to your next question, yes, I’m sure this movie will be available for rental soon.