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Visit Snopes.com, the myth-busting web site and you will discover something new every time. And in most cases, what you’ll discover is that a lot of things you always thought were true were in fact LIES!

For example, just last week I discovered to my great relief that swallowing a watermelon seed will NOT cause a watermelon to grow inside you – this according to Snopes.com – unless, of course, you also accidentally consume Ortho plant fertilizer mixed with large doses of Miracle Gro potting soil, drink two gallons of water per day, and sit under a sun lamp with your mouth wide open for 30 minutes a day for two months. But even then, the chances are slim. And it probably won’t be edible.

Every day, people send me well-intentioned emails, passing along what they naively believe to be an informative news alert or a warning about some health or safety risk – most of which turn out to be utterly false. Oh sure, to be fair, every now and then the warning turns out to be helpful information I can actually use in my daily life  – like the warning against wearing sweat pants made of bacon while snuggling in the wild with a bear cub within 100 feet of its mama. Just no way that’s gonna have a good outcome. Thank God I received that email just in time, right before my vacation to Yellowstone. Could have turned out badly.

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[Author’s note: There is a remote chance that a couple readers might find one or two eensy weensy passages of this week’s column vaguely sexist in tone. If that is your experience, please understand that this week’s column is meant to be a parody of antiquated sexual stereotypes. If I were actually as Neanderthal in my views of the roles men and women as I portray below, my wife would have divorced me long before we ever got married. – TEJ]

[To LISTEN to an audio podcast of this week's column, press the PLAY button arrow below.]

This Sunday is the biggest single day of the year in sports: No, I’m not talking about the Fresno Kennel Club Annual Dog Show taking place this coming Sunday – although granted, that is a very big sporting event. I am, of course, referring to the incredibly popular Waste Management Phoenix Open of Golf this Sunday on CBS.

But if you’ve overloaded on golf recently, you might want to switch the channel to FOX to catch the Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. I believe it’s Super Bowl MCLXXXXVIIIVX, but I could be off by a couple X’s.

If you’ve been a reader of this column for any amount of time, you know I never like to brag about my past achievements. But as a former three-year NFL veteran with the Miami Dolphins,* I consider myself a bit of an expert on the X’s and O’s of the great American pastime.

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It’s that time of year again – a time when we traditionally look back over the previous year and think about all the things we should be thankful for. It’s a time to remind ourselves to see that our glass is not half empty but really half full. Here are just a few things I am thankful for this time of year.

I am deeply thankful….

That I am not my neighbor Rich Donaldson. Man, what a streak of bad luck he’s been having lately.  First he sells all of his stock when the market tanked at rock bottom at 6500. Then he invests his remaining life savings in a company that manufactures telephone booths, saying he was convinced cell phones were just a fad. Uh, no, Rich, not a fad. On the bright side, Rich will make you a great deal on a telephone booth. No reasonable offer will be refused. Comes complete with a Yellow Pages directory (if you’re old enough to remember what those were.)

That through a rigorous program of regular strenuous aerobic exercise and weight training, combined with a reduced calorie diet consisting mostly of kelp, almonds and curdled skim milk, over the past three months I’ve only put on two pounds.

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As far as I know, I am not the strongest man in the world. I doubt I would ever be mistaken for the fastest either. But I think I can say with a high degree of confidence, that if there were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s MOST INFLEXIBLE HUMAN BEING, my picture would appear.

Our family recently joined a health club. What a terrible mistake that was. This past week, I took my very first YOGA class ever. Oh My God. Somehow – don’t ask me how – I made it through it. But if you’re over 50 and have never tried yoga before, let mine be a cautionary tale. Don’t even think about trying yoga – unless you enjoy intense pain coupled with public humiliation.

My competition in the class looked harmless enough: 15 women of various ages and sizes and three men of Indian descent who appeared to be in top physical fitness. These 15 women and the three Indian men (who, as best as I could tell came straight out of yoga central casting) all came equipped with their yoga mats, matching yoga outfits and bare feet. There was this one lone middle-aged white guy who came in without a yoga mat, wearing a dorky T-shirt that read “I’m in shape. Round is a shape” and sporting conspicuous white socks and sneakers. That middle-aged white guy would be me. In retrospect, I’m surprised an alarm bell did not sound the moment I walked through the door, declaring that a yoga pretender was attempting to break into this yoga sanctuary. I had absolutely no business being there.

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That’s my sister, Betsy Jones – on a good day. She’s 52 years old, but on most days acts 24: carefree, fun-loving.  But on a bad day, stay away from her because she is cursed with absolutely the worst luck of anybody I know. Take a good close look at this photo. You may think she’s on the verge of snapping – about to lose it and leap over the wall, with a one-way ticket to Crazy Town. And you would be correct.

You see, Betsy has had, well, a rather challenging life, to put it mildly. Imagine Winnie the Pooh going on an “explore”.  He comes upon a sign that says “This way to ‘Honey, Goodness, and Nice People’, that way to ‘Hell’s Burning Dungeons of Despair.’” Of course Pooh follows the sign toward ‘Honey’. Problem is, by the time Betsy gets there, the wind blew the signs around. Uh oh. That’s the story of Betsy’s life – “Blown by the wind.”

You know how some people lead a charmed life? Well, I think Betsy was put on this planet to balance out the scales – singlehandedly. It’s like Betsy has a sign on her back that reads “Go ahead, kick me again – but could you kindly do it before I get back up? – it will save me another trip down.”

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Recently, my daughter Rachel and I took a vacation to visit friends and family in the Eastern USA. As part of our holiday adventure, we spent a night in world-famous Niagara Falls, NY. This short visit was a high point of our vacation – except for one small disappointment – our accommodations at the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY. (Yes, it’s a real hotel.) If you would like a relaxing, restful, clean hotel room for an evening, might I propose an alternate place of lodging? But if unexpected surprises are what you look for in your vacation destination, then the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY may be just the thrill ride for you.

Below is a copy of my actual thank-you letter to the hotel after our recent stay. (Disclaimer: the photos below are not actual photos from the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY and were not included in the letter I sent. I include them here to give you a sense of the adventure we experienced. – tj) Read More…

… is something I know nothing about. Nevertheless, I can’t count the number of times each week people come up to me on the street, at the unemployment office or in the women’s locker room at my gym, and ask me about my blog. Why just last week, there must have been almost two people who approached me. Now that I think about it, he was holding a cardboard sign and seemed more interested in a cash donation to some cause. Read More…

Greetings, Class of 2011. My, don’t you all look so grown up in your elegant caps and gowns and iPods blasting out Death Cab for Cutie at full volume. It seems only yesterday that you were stumbling around in Huggies and toddler booties and iPods blasting out Raffi at full volume. Graduation Day is upon us for millions of American college seniors like you. As has been my tradition for the past 17 years about this time, this week’s post is my annual Advice to you, the College Graduating Class of 2011.

My advice to you? Don’t pay attention to anyone who tries to give you advice…. except for the advice I am about to share, of course. It’s important that you make your own choices in life. So make good ones. In looking back on the choices I made in my youth, I realize I made some poor ones now and then. If I had it to do over again, I wished I hadn’t taken three years of Latin in high school. I’m not Catholic so becoming Pope is probably out of the question. So exactly when would I ever have used it? Never.

I also should never have taken Post-Modern Latvian Studies in college. That [#bleep#]-ing bastard Professor Yuri Švābe was a cruel old son of a bitch. I wish he would die a painful, wrenching death for totally messing up my GPA… I mean, er, um, I found him to be rather draconian in his grading methodology. Perhaps most of all, I deeply regret rooming with Tony Markowitz of Monmouth, New Jersey for two years in college. Not only was he a complete slob and never did the dishes, but he always smelled like bass and routinely ate my Lucky Charms cereal without asking. I urge you to learn from my youthful mistakes.

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One of President Obama’s campaign promises was to address the energy crisis. It’s one of his top priorities just after healthcare reform, job creation, education reform and improving his Baseball Opening Day Ceremonial Curve Ball (needs a lot of work).

I beamed with pride when I read that on one front, America is making amazing progress: Energy conservation. According to a recent survey by the widely respected and completely unheard of news publication The Daily Beast, the United States now ranks #1 in the entire world in personal energy conservation.  Okay, if you want to get technical, the Daily Beast actually called the USA the laziest nation on the planet. But I say it’s all in your perspective. Personally, I would offer my American countrymen a high five but I don’t want to strain my wrist. Turns out, according to this report, we Americans rank:

• Number one in per person daily caloric intake
• Number one in number of trips to fast food restaurants per year
• Number one in per person hours of daily television viewing and
• Dead last in the amount of time spent exercising per day, or as I prefer to think of it, first in personal energy conservation!

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Last November and December, I experienced some shortened work weeks thanks to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Both holidays were preceded by shortened three-day work weeks, so I had to be extremely focused, making efficient use of every minute of every work day. I cut way back on the amount of time I would otherwise spend watching lame YouTube videos involving practical jokes where some unsuspecting dude gets kicked in the family jewels (I can never get enough of that highbrow humor).

This time, with only three days to get everything done, I choose not to waste my time sending around the couple dozen recycled humor emails I usually pass along each day, making fun of people from the South or one of those lame parodies on the Twelve Days of Christmas. Nope, no point wasting my co-workers’ time this week. There’d be plenty of time to waste their time by sending these around next week instead. Let’s stay focused, Tim.

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