Sam Reviews "Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man" by Tim Allen

I'd like to preface this by saying my knowledge of Tim Allen begins and ends with Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, "Last Man Standing", and that he is from Detroit, Michigan.  I'd never seen any of his stand up comedy before reading this.  Because I wasn't familiar with his stand up, a lot of the jokes he tried to incorporate into his book went over my head and I had to read things a few times to realize he had segued into a joke.

After getting mostly through this book, I did search YouTube for a few clips, and it honestly seems like he really only ever had one set as a comedian and most of the jokes from his set made it into this book, so if I had been familiar with his stand up I probably would have been disappointed by this book for it's lack of new content.

All of that being said, I don't think Tim Allen is very funny (oops).  Also, jumping around to stories that seem somewhat unrelated may work well for a stand up set, but it falls flat in a book and made things severely lacking in flow and continuity.

However, the last chapter, the one that mostly talks about being a dad to his daughter was really touching.

The first interesting fact I learned in this book was this his real name is Tim Allen Dick, and that people in Hollywood encouraged him to drop the Dick from his name.

"They're just words.  The symbols and meanings - positive, negative, enlightening, insulting - are in our heads, which is why the power of some words has a lot to do with all the social and sexual dysfunction in this country."

"Men look at women the way men look at cars.  Everyone looks at Ferraris.  Now and then we like a pick up truck, and we all end up with a station wagon."

"Even guys who weren't homosexual before will, after a while, try something,  Prison and Hollywood are exactly the same thing."

"[Thoughts on] Guys with other guys girlfriends - Without even trying, other guys are nicer to your girlfriend than you are.  Even if they're not really after her, she'll find it easy to lean on their shoulders, ask what they're thinking, and how she can get her concerns through to you."

"I'm also a bit suspicious of any two people who don't struggle with that decision [to get married].  ...   Marriage is a big decision.  Big enough to procrastinate about a decade."

"A lasting marriage is like a job.  But here's the problem with jobs:  They're great when you first get them.  Then about a week into it you realize, "There are a few problems here."  Then they get repetitive and boring.  And pretty soon you think that the guy in the next cubicle has a much better job, which would suit you just fine.  The trick is to get past this."

"Men have all the destructive tendencies.  We're encouraged to be little destroyers from birth.  These traits come in handy, though.  Once we have a family, we'll destroy anything we have to that threatens it.  Women like us for that.  Sometimes men get so confused they actually destroy the family."

"'Philanthropist' means 'love or benevolence toward mankind, in general.'  ...  The definition includes the idea that a philanthropist is someone who makes an 'effort to promote the happiness or social elevation of mankind, by making donations.'"

"A 'philanderer' is someone who 'makes love without serious intentions."


I found this video randomly as I was looking for Tim Allen's stand up.  They read bits of the book and just kind of talk about it, but their opinion is pretty similar to mine. Plus there's excerpts from the books so you can get a taste of it haha

Sam Reviews "The Ballad of Tom Dooley", (Ballad #9) by Sharyn McCrumb

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, it is number nine in a series but I don't think I'd ever realized that without Goodreads telling me it. My preferred genre is more modern day time with modern day stuff going on.  I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with the bluegrass song "Tom Dooley", but it's one of my favorite songs from when my family would get together and jam out to old school music like this.

Because of my familiarity with the song, I picked this book up at a $5 bag sale at the Flint Public Library.  I admittedly struggle with books that are set in an older era and in a setting with a dialect, but this book was so easy to get into. There were some word choices I struggled over since I don't read historical fiction or books set in the south but this book overall was so well put together and easy to get through. It only took me a month to read because I wasn't putting in the effort to make it through, had I just sat down and done it I could have easily read through this book in a week. I found the characters to all be unique and well developed and I really love the main character, Pauline. The story was thorough and interesting, and even with knowing the folk song about Tom Dooley, I still enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot.

"A case of law is a chess game for those who make their living at it, and a great sorrow for those who get caught up in its web."

"A man died bravely, doing perhaps the only noble thing he ever achieved in his brutal, useless life.  Another fifty years of living would not have improved him, for he had only a minute's worth of courage, and  he spent that."

"People will tell this story for a century ... they will sing about it, and spin fanciful tales, and act it out, turning all it's principals into Sunday- school sweethearts and black- hearted villains. It will all be nonsense. At least I remember what was real." 

"I advise you not to go hat in hand to any relatives you may have, for your kinfolks will treat you worse than ten strangers ever would, and they'll think themselves charitable while they are doing it." 

"Any man who insists on taking up with a beautiful wife ought to pay dearly for the purchase." 

"She'd not trouble a doctor to help her do it [birth her baby] when there were midwives a-plenty to be had. What would a man doctor know about bringing babies into the world anyhow?" 

"Is it not a wonder that the human race lives on at all?  All men give you is pain and sorrow, and I cannot see why any woman would have aught to do with them." 

"Never in my life had I felt much of anything for anybody. For me one person was the same as all the rest, and all of them let you down sooner or later.  Trusting people was just asking for trouble.  I tried to figure out what folk wanted, and I'd give it to them,  so long as it got me what I needed,  but I never put any feelings into it.  It was just a way to get along in this world.  Whenever I heard somebody talk about this deep feeling they had for someone they said they loved, I thought I must be missing something, but I didn't know what it was.  It never seemed to profit them that had it,  though,  so I reckoned I was better off without. And maybe they were only fooling themselves,  anyhow,  for I couldn't see that love made any difference in how they acted - not in the long run." 

"People believing it will make it true. That's as close to truth as we ever get this side of heaven."

"Women's anger is different.  We burn long and slow,  and you may never see the flames,  but that doesn't mean it's over." 

"She would not be comforted with common sense, so I gave it up, and let her rave." 

"She had moved clear into the future, and  she'd be sleepwalking until she caught up to it." 

"It's funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of." 

"Mostly it's easy to tell people what they want to hear. You just figure out what you really think and then say the opposite."

"They loved each other, I suppose,  or what passes for love with young and passionate people,  whose impulses are not tempered by education or moral guidance. Their lives were without purpose or direction, and so perhaps they became each other's purpose." 

"Whatever they felt for one another,  that lust that made everything else in the world fade to insignificance: I never felt that.   Never did.  And I could never quite figure out whether I envied them their transports of sentiment or whether I pitied them, as one would a madman whose delusions blind him to the realities of life.  But they died young, and I lived on for decades,  ending up revered and prosperous in a mountain mansion, safe from the riptides of emotion that sweep lesser men away to their deaths." 

"Ann was like a shooting star in my life,  so beautiful it takes your breath away,  but I reckon what you really need to find your way in the dark is just a good steady lantern." 

"It is dangerous to jest with fools,  for they are liable to believe anything." 

"She was beautiful, you know.  Like having a fairy maiden out of an old ballad come to stay, but you know how those songs end.  The fairy always goes back to where she came from. She never stays forever.  And after a while it seems like it was all a dream." 

"He'd not find a woman like her again - and maybe he'd live longer for the fact of that."

"When I was little, I used to think that if you climbed to the top of the mountain,  you could touch it [the moon].  But one night I climbed all the way up the ridge, and  when I got there,  the moon was as far away as ever. Now, I reckon freedom is like that. You think that if you just go someplace else you could touch it, but  when you get there,  it will still be a million miles away."

"The Foster women seem to have the power to bewitch a man,  like the fairy queen in the old ballads,  but sooner or later,  he wakes up on a cold hillside,  with a handful of dust and ashes, and after that all he wants for the rest of his life is a plain ordinary woman who will share his burdens,  instead of a moonshine maiden who gives you dreams and leaves you with nothing."

"I shall go to Wilkes County for good, and I  will take care to steer clear of tragedies,  so no one will ever think to ask what became of me.  The people who live happily ever after - they don't appear in the history books. They just fade away. I reckon that's what happiness is. " 

"Doctors,  as a rule, do not attend their patients' funerals, and  it is for similar reasons that lawyers absent themselves from public executions:  it is daunting to have to face one's professional failure squarely in the cold light of day."