Craig Tyson Adams

  My mother mentioned Elvis so much, I thought he was a relative While growing up in our house,  Elvis Presley  was very much present. We didn’t have the black velvet Elvis paintings and Elvis music wasn’t played that much in the house. The times Mom sent me to the store to get the  Los Angeles Sunday Times  was when her Elvis fixation reared its head. My parents went to Las Vegas a lot.  Three or four times a year, they’d pack up and leave for a few days, leaving me with my grandparents. After a time, I knew when they were going to leave when I heard the name Elvis. She’d be on the phone with one of her friends or family when she’d say  ‘We’re going to Vegas to see Elvis’. I thought Elvis Presley was a family member To my 8-year-old self, this was very befuddling. They were leaving me to see someone that was like a mythical being. Elvis Presley was like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Why hadn’t I met Elvis? How come this Elvis guy was some kind of mystery ?  The adults talked about

  Just when they thought there was a chance. If this isn’t the biggest PED suspension, it’s at least in the top 3. The  San Diego Padres  fan is the most tortured in baseball. There’s no contest. It’s the hands-down leader. I’ll go as far as saying San Diego sports fans are on top of the sports misery index for all sports. Suffering doesn’t describe it. They’re flat-out cursed. Their sports teams can’t even sniff a title. Oh, I’m sorry. They no longer have teams. San Diego’s NFL and NBA teams left town for Los Angeles. The L.A. Clippers used to be headquartered in San Diego. The Houston Rockets also began life in San Diego. This is getting exhausting. The Padres have been around since 1969. They have been to two World Series. They have won a grand total of one game in the fall classic. One in 1984. The past few seasons, they seemed to build a winner. The Padres spent millions constructing a club that could compete with the best. They’ve signed star free agents. They’ve made trades for

  I write whatever seems to pop in my head whether I like it or not. My humble beginnings began with my parents.  My father was an unidentified astronaut and my mother was Jacqueline Onassis. After the scandal, I was put up for adoption. I found my way to a small town in Southern California called Mira Loma. There I was raised with four other children. Since I was nine years younger than the one before me, they were the ones that told me I was adopted.  The story has it that I was discovered on the front porch in a picnic basket. The nice lady that denied the story and claimed that indeed she was my mother did the best she could. The man that she said was indeed  my father didn’t say much besides that he was hungry.  He also had a prodigious ability to rent beer. I write every day, sometimes twice. I started this thing called writing when sitting on a bench looking out over Santa Monica bay one evening. Pondering my next move, a lobster with the face of  Jayne Mansfield  popped out of

  Ventura learned the hard way not to charge the GOAT There are some things in life that someone just doesn’t do. Don’t tug on Superman’s cape is one of them. Nolan Ryan, besides being the greatest human to ever throw a baseball, is a lifetime cattle rancher in the state of Texas. If there is one thing that Ryan does better than punching out batters, it’s punching cattle. He can rope ’em, poke ’em, tie ’em and brand ’em with the best of ’em. Ryan is one of those actual cowboys that  Kevin Costner  plays on television, except Ryan is not playing. Nolan is a real-life John Wayne, even though John Wayne wasn’t real life. On his way to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ryan pitched for 27 seasons, won 292 games, and struck out 5,714 hitters. Nobody will ever strike out that many hitters ever again. Ryan threw fastballs over 100 mph and a curveball that was like it was falling off a table. Later in his career, he developed an off-speed pitch that just wasn’t fair. If hitters could’ve sued him, the

  A cubicle cautionary tale It happened in a flash. My hand struck the bottom of the desk and the stapler dislodged and fell into my lap. Before I felt it, I heard a click. As the pain washed over me, I looked down. There it was. The staple. The pain stopped and was replaced by a shivering cold as the shock set in. As I caught my breath, I stood up and adjusted myself. In a panic, I hurried to the men’s room. There was another guy in there. Without looking up, we exchanged greetings, and I went into the stall. There wasn’t any blood, but it was stuck. I couldn’t dislodge it. What the hell? I left there and headed to my boss’s office. I had to find some sort of authoritative guidance. As I opened her door and walked in, she looked up at me, startled. “What’s wrong?” “Uh, there’s been an accident.” I said, closing the door. I couldn’t let my coworkers hear. They’d find out soon enough. I didn’t want to be there when they heard. “An accident? Where? What happened?” “The stapler. Uh, I’ve

  A guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do. Mostly everybody knows that Orson Welles is famous for arguably the greatest movie ever made. Citizen Kane  has topped the annual list of monumental movies for decades. It’s well known that Welles drunkenly endorsed Paul Masson wines in the later part of his career. But, most people don’t know what happened in between when Welles had trouble finding financing for his movie projects. He alienated studio bosses and television executives. Here are a few facts about what Welles did during that time to facilitate fundraising for his projects. Welles supplemented his income by being the training jockey of Secretariat. It’s been said that is the reason the horse was fast enough to win the triple crown with a regular jockey. Orson was a stand-in at Sea World if some attractions became ill. He was a popular seat filler at televised award shows because he could fill two seats instead of only one, cutting down on the cost of paying multiple people. Well