We're Closed!

Ain't nothing to see here! Go check out our new blog.

Exile on Clark Street.

Thanks to all our readers over the years and keep on reading over at our new place.

New Site Launch on Monday

Remember kids, TMS is re-launching on Monday as Exile on Clark Street. Mark your calendars. In the meantime, we apologize as we purge some of the "less-than-appropriate" material from our vaults!

War Criminal: Pay-Per-View Porn

A while back, I was drunk and flipping through the channel guide deep into the cable channels I knew I didn't have. Truth be told, I was actually looking for a WWE pay-per-view that I was thinking about purchasing. I eventually found it and was going to order it before I noticed that it cost a ridiculous $55. "Fuck that," I said. I have way better things to do with my money than watch aging wrestlers I vaguely remember from my childhood grab each other's decaying bodies and try to lay on top of each other for the pinfall. So, in a completely unrelated maneuver, I paged down a few clicks and ordered some filthy hardcore pornography.

Why did I order pay-per-view porn when I had a perfectly fine internet connection? Well, I was really really drunk. Also, the title of the porno implied that young Asian girls would be doing some sick shit while wearing schoolgirl outfits. Plus, the money I saved from not ordering a wrestling PPV meant I could get porn & order a pizza later and still come out ahead. In short, I had nothing to lose.

Modern cable porn isn't like it was back when I was a barely-pubescent little fucker; hitting the A/B switch on the old cable box to keep the scrambled porn image on the screen a few seconds longer so I could listen to softcore starlets moan and maybe see a scrambled nipple if I craned my neck to the side & the gods looked upon my sinful acts with favor. Oh no, this pay-per-view stuff was FOR REAL hardcore porn with full penetration you actually get to see. It seemed as nothing was left to the imagination. They showed cocks, pubic hair, gaping pussies...even the much-sought-after Asian chick's asshole was up for grabs. It was as if my normally Mayberry-esque cable suddenly had its very own Red Light District and Barney Fife was giving me the tour after doing poppers while Andy was watching Otis. All was well & good for a while. But, as the first scene ended, I noticed something a tad disturbing... There was absolutely no male ejaculation! As the moment of the moneyshot approached, the scene faded to black, much like how sex in a 40's movie was implied by a slow pan to the window while a couple kissed near a bed.

I forgave the first scene of it's omission and continued watching. But when the next Moment of Truth rolled around, the same fucking thing happened! It was at this instant that I felt cheated out of my $12. Really, cable? Ejaculations aren't any more over the top than all the spitting on cocks that happens in modern porno, or the nasty gagging blowjob scenes filled with spittle & mucous. If that shit ever happened to me in the course of lovemaking, I would call it a fucking night right then & there. Why, oh why do they spit so much in all modern porn? Who likes this??? I would never spit on a girl's pussy unless she asked me to, and even then I'm sure my latent Catholicism would rise up to prevent me from enjoying the act of depravity. And, Catholic shame or not, I certainly wouldn't lap up my own loogie a moment later. That's not sanitary. But my pay-per-view porno had no problem with these aberrations. I decided to look the other way. Figuratively, of course. This was 30 something minutes into the movie and I had completed my dirty deed 25 minutes prior (sadly, I finished during the opening credit montage). I watched the remaining 85 minutes of the movie like an Anthropologist studying chimps. Sexy, Asian chimps.

To make a long story short, the remaining scenes cut out their "endings" too. What a bunch of bullshit! It isn't that I need a dude ejaculating to let me know a porn scene is over. I'm no rookie here; I knew where the scene was headed. But without that last filthy moment of closure, I might as well have been looking at still pictures for 100 minutes. And I certainly wouldn't pay $12 for fuckin' pictures. I'm not going to mince words here: a porn scene just isn't complete without male ejaculation. Sure, we can get political and say that the whole damn system is wrong, but you can't change it. It's nature. It's science. It's what non-lesbian porn has taught us since the beginning of time: Male ejaculation = end of scene. Female ejaculation = fetish video. And if the scene has 2 or more men, the last one to finish gets to lock up. That's just how it goes.

A porn scene ending without a cumshot is sort of like reading a bedtime story to a child and leaving out the "Happily Ever After" part. Sure, maybe your child will assume the best for the Prince & Princess, but without being explicitly told that the story is over, your child is most likely pining for closure. And we all know that there's no better closure than a huge facial.

Why Andre Dawson was a Badass

When YouTube first emerged onto the scene there were very few things I wanted to see posted more than video of the Eric Show beanball to Andre Dawson. I remember watching this game as a kid. It was one of the most unbelievable moments I ever saw. Well finally someone posted it.



Things of note that I remembered from that incident.

• Rick Sutcliffe going apeshit and being one of the first guys out of the dugout.
• After laying on the ground for a while, Dawson finally comes to and goes ballistic as he takes off after Show on the field.
• After getting Show to retreat into the dugout, Dawson attempts to go down into the Padres dugout after him.

The following inning, Greg Maddux beans Benito Santiago in the back and gets ejected. Rick Sutcliffe shared his take on Maddux in that game in an article he wrote last year for ESPN discussing beanballs.

The one incident that I remember most is from 1987, when Padres pitcher Eric Show hit Dawson in the face. I wasn't pitching that day, actually a young Greg Maddux was, but I'd had a feeling that the Padres might be out to get Hawk. I even said something to him about it, telling him I didn't have a good feeling. He had hit two home runs the night before and another in his first at-bat of the game. Then, in the third inning, Show drilled him in the eye with a fastball. People may remember that I charged the mound from the dugout when that happened.

Before the game, management had told Maddux that if he didn't get the win he'd be sent down. Knowing that, as I was getting ejected for fighting, I told him to go out and get through the fifth inning to get that win he needed before thinking about retaliating. He wasn't hearing any of that. I reminded him that he needed to get that win or else he was going back to the minors. He told me he didn't care if he got another win in his whole career. And the very next inning with the lead and two out and no one on base Maddux got payback by hitting Benito Santiago in the back as hard as he could. That tells you what kind of teammate Maddux was even starting out. He got sent down the next day, but his teammates knew what kind of guy he was. People might not expect it from a mild-mannered guy like him, but he would protect his hitters as much as any pitcher I ever played with.

Awesome, so not only did that incident lead to one of the most memorable bench-clearing brawls I've ever witnessed, but it essentially gave a young Maddux his first opportunity to earn respect from his teammates.

Pitchers and Catchers Report Today

The new season is upon us. Get excited.

TMS Shirts Final Closeout!

In the not-quite four year span of Thunder Matt's Saloon I've been pretty low key with plugging the Thunder Matt's T-Shirt Store, figuring folks were coming here to read our writing not to get an annoying sales pitch.

Well, with less than two weeks left before we shut the lights off here and move to our new blog I'd figure this was a better time than any to finally give you an annoying sales pitch.

With the TMS Era coming to a close, the shirts at the TMS Store will be officially retired as I begin work on creating new shirts for Exile on Clark Street. This is your last chance to buy a piece of TMS nostalgia. Here are the shirts you can still get your hands on.

Centaur Approved and Purveyors of Esoterica - These are the two newest designs I created. Both of them are pretty sweet. I mean who doesn't want a shirt with a centaur on it? The only thing that is guaranteed to get you laid more is the long sleeved wolf shirt.


8-Bit Gridiron Glory and JO Sampson - Here's two shirts featuring our favorite running backs. One is the greatest video game athlete of all time, the other has served as a TMS guest correspondent over the years. Both look great on a shirt. DOUBLE LEGIT!!!!


Thunder Matt's Saloon and Ast-Raped in '88 - The Thunder Matt's Saloon shirt took on various forms over the years to match our most current site design. This is the final edition. Ast-Raped in '88 is our best-selling shirt of all-time. I find that impressive and horrifying at the same time. Note: the Rick Astley post pre-dates the RickRoll internet meme.


What About Beecake? and Tommy Buzanis - Sadly the comments to this post have been lost. What started with some cheap shots by Daft Funk at Billy Boyd turned into a barrage of angry comments and hate mail from his Fan Club. This shirt immortalizes one such angry fan's comment, referencing Boyd's band, Beecake back in Scotland. And thus "What About Beecake?" became the ultimate rhetorical question in TMS-lore. Speaking of TMS-lore, no character casts a bigger shadow than Mr. Tommy Buzanis. This shirt features an oft-uttered phrase from everyone's favorite steak-eating, fake-tanning, alcoholic divorcee.

So hurry and order now. All profits will help me buy a bootleg copy of "New Moon" on DVD.

The 2010 Chicago Cubs, Pay More for a Crappier Product!

So individual game tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am. Next to family birthdays and my anniversary, this is one of the single most important days of the year for me. I take a day off work for this. The exhilaration of getting in to buy tickets from the virtual waiting room is an immense high for me. Yes, I know how pathetic that may sound.

So imagine my dismay when I read this article on Cubs.com.

Starting Monday, February 15th at 10am CT, fans will have first access to all Chicago Cubs 2010 regular season home games by going to Cubs.com and paying a 20% premium on the face value of the ticket.

Are you kidding me? Never mind a bleacher seat on a platinum date costs $54, and that's before getting punched in the face with taxes and fees, but now you can buy them earlier for $64.80. Nearly $65 for a general admission seat. The article does say there is a limit on how many seats will be available for pre-sale, so schmucks like me can still have the opportunity to be gouged at the normal face value on Friday.

What's more frustrating is that if you recall this piece that came out back in early December, Cubs president Crane Kenney had this little gem.

"This isn't the year to go crazy on ticket price increases," Kenney said.

I'm curious what "going crazy" is then if he doesn't consider selling a bulk of the tickets at 20% over face value a bit insane. Perhaps to Crane "crazy" meant selling an internal organ or your first born child for tickets.

Also from that December article was this snippet about the Ricketts plans for investing in the team.

What helps the team now is that the new owners, the Ricketts family, plan on investing all profits into the Cubs, which wasn't the case when the Tribune Co. was the owner.

Well that's a relief. So next season we should expect players with actual talent to be purchased with all the profits? I'll remember that when the Cubs sign yet another mediocre second basemen or right fielder next offseason.

So thanks Cubs management for finding a new way to screw the fans. I guess you guys are at least a little more straightforward this time about scalping your own tickets.

The Final Dark Days of Thunder Matt's Saloon

It's gotten quiet in the Saloon lately. Real quiet.

Not only have we hardly been writing about the Cubs, we've hardly been not writing about the Cubs which was are M.O. for the last couple years. This I'm sure has led to the question from all four of you still reading our site. Is TMS dead?

The answer is: almost.

The lights at Thunder Matt's Saloon will be going out for good on February 28. On March 1 we will begin a new era as we open a new and improved Cubs blog called Exile on Clark Street.

I'm sure that may lead to a couple folks drudging up our failed blog Pomp Culture. Yes, we tried to ditch the whole idea of being a Cubs blog and it didn't quite work out. I assure you this will be different. For one, we will still be a Cubs blog, and two, um....I have no two.

The main purpose for Exile is that we're going to refocus our efforts on bringing more Cubs coverage yet still maintain the strange esoterica that made TMS popular for a small group of folks. In order to do that we're joining forces with two other Cubs blogs that do a great job keeping up with the latest happenings with the ball club. College of Idiots and Wasting Away in Wrigleyville will be partnering up with us for this new blogging venture.

We're pretty excited for this new site as we get back into gear for the upcoming season. For a sneak peek here's a look at the new site's header.

Hats off to Ginger Russ for the sweet design.

Anyway, my main point is business at the Saloon is definitely slow and coming to an inevitable halt, but I assure all of you to stay tuned as we get ready to launch Exile on Clark Street on March 1st.