The Suprise Ending for the Summer 2007 Tennis Classic

I realize I have not put this post up, so here it is!

After what seemed like an eternity of tennis playing this summer, the Summer 2007 Tennis Classic has come to an end. A disappointing end. A tie. The game finished tied at 9 each.
Tracy was quoted after the match saying "What is this soccer!? I mean, come on! Even I'm let down." Tony said "Yeah, I really don't care. At least I didn't loose." Tracy replied "Oh you're a looser alright! A 60 foot tall looser! Who's addicted to Go-Girl energy beverage!"
Tony rebutted with a punch to Tracy's stomach. "I see your point." Tracy wheezed. Tony then challenged Tracy to a tie breaker match. Tracy accepted. The fans cheered. The heavens opened and a choir of angels sung in rejoice! The hours and days past. Time was almost at a stand still as the world waited for the match to end all matches. The winner takes all, to the death, end game for the Summer 2007 Tennis Classic. The day of the match came, and was canceled. Tracy sustained a season ending eyeball injury at a family function. Tracy said "Look, I don't want to point fingers at who did this, but her initials are SARAH JANE THOMAS!". That is correct...Tony's sister in law. She poked Tracy in the eye and claimed it was an accident. Tracy instantly accused her of making him forfeit the match as he blinked stupidly with his watery, wounded eyeball. Tony then pointed out that she was also Tracy's sister in law, which is true. This reporter speculates that Sarah had her own agenda for the devastating eyeball attack. The world may never know why she did it. We'll have to chock it up to one of the worlds great mysteries, like Stonehenge, or Big Foot, or who exactly is it that's buying all the disgusting Miracle Whip?
The Summer 2007 Tennis Classic has been officially closed. Tracy and Tony have eluded to the possibility of a future grudge match later this year. They have made it perfectly clear that their are no promises. "I'm hesitant to schedule the match. You never know if SJT is lurking around the corner ready to gouge out my other eye." Tracy said. "You pansy." Tony replied. This reporter is looking forward to a rematch, which is sure to happen someday. Until then, This has been Guy Reportertron with the Summer 2007 Tennis Classic.

The Pirate's Life.com is Back Online!

Just a little note to say that the Pirate's Life web site is back online and better than ever. Feel free to poke around and click on stuff and junk.

Tracy aka Captain William

http://www.pirates-life.com

My New Sketch Book Blog

I decided to keep a sketch book blog...here it is http://tracysketches.blogspot.com/

Philadelphia Adventure 10.11.07

I wrote this a few months ago...I didn't post because I thought it was a little harsh. I re-read it and thought it was funny, although, it no longer really applies because the fine people here at Domus have pretty much solved most of the noise issues we've had.


My lovely new Domus apartment is loud. I don't mean 1970's style olive green shag carpet and sea shell decorations. I mean I can't sleep at night due to all the noise. It's getting ludicrous. On average I'm getting about 10 hours of sleep a week. That's right a week! I am getting to the point of sheer exhaustion. Hang on, my keyboard just turned into a pile of snakes...oh, and I'm hallucinating now as well. (Don't worry Mom, I'm not really hallucinating...yet.) As I lay awake in the wee hours of the morning listening to the constant metal thumping sound of the trash compactor directly below our apartment as it makes it's dull thud every 20 seconds and lasts for hours at a time, I think to myself "It's not that loud, just go to sleep." Yet I can't stop listening. It's like some form of maddening torture. I imagine at Guantanamo bay in the not so secret CIA prison some inmate is being held in a swanky apartment and every time he tries to fall asleep, they turn on the machine. I imagine this machine is fondly called the "Thumping Sound of Madness." After one or two nights of this,the prisoner will gladly spill the beans on whatever they are asked, just as long as they turn off the machine! I feel like calling the front desk of our place just to tell them I'm ready to talk! But they don't ask any questions!
If that were the only sound, I think I could handle it. But it's not. Our apartment is located in the worst possible location in the building. We are right off the elevators, so when people come home at 2 am being loud, we can hear it. We are right next to the loading dock, so when they open and close the giant garage doors, we hear it. Especially when they decide to let someone move in what must be elephants and loaded hair triggered shotguns at 11 o'clock at night until 1 am. Being so conveniently located next to the loading dock, we also get to have the giant big rig trucks park right next to our windows while they yell to other people "Hey Youz! Gettoutahere!" at 5 in the morning. Or like on several occasions, urinate right out side our window. Or go through the big garbage bin rummaging as loud as they can at all hours of the night for who knows what. It must be their misplaced Diamond collection for how fervently they rummage. We are also right next to the garbage chute which runs the entire 8 floors of the building. I don't know what it is about the rich people here at Domus, but they love to toss their garbage between midnight and 4 am. And we hear it as it clunks and clangs all the way down the chute, which is also (lucky us) our walls. That isn't a soft maddening noise. It's a loud "What on earth was that!" noise. The first few times it happened we awoke with a start and did the "Someone must be in the apartment hitting our stuff with a metal bat" walk around the place until we discovered what it actually was. Also, the brick building right out side our window is the subway, which runs all night long. It sounds like a great rushing fast moving train that can be heard loud and clear from our home. We are also right next to a few hospitals, so the constant sirens blaring at all hours of the night is also quite disturbing. And to top it all off, we have the worlds loudest "Air Conditioner Condensation Pump" which is located right next to our daughters bed room. It sounds like an industrial strength vacuum cleaner being turned on suddenly and lasts for about 10 seconds, which is enough time for it to wake our kid and bug the living crap out of us. We have had the Domus experts looking at it to see if there is any way it can be silenced. The response was "Turn your air conditioner way down so it's cold and doesn't have condensation." To do this, we would have to freeze out our unit costing us tons of money, and we would all have constant colds. No thanks.
All of these issues combine into one giant mess for me. No sleep. On top of it all, we are paying 3000 bucks a month to get no sleep. If they reduced our rent...a lot...I think I could sleep better. Part of me just freaks out in the middle of the night as I lay there listening to all the sounds thinking "I'm paying so much money for THIS (insert cuss words)!" I'm almost certain it would be more peaceful if our apartment was situated directly over an Indian burial ground instead of where it is. Then all we would have to deal with are those pesky ghosts.

New Page from The War

Here is the last page for a while. These six pages make it complete to submit to the major comic book companies. I hope you like it. Thanks all for the nice comments on my previous post. It means a lot.

Tracy

First Five Pages of My New Comic "The War"

Warning! This is not a joke! These are the first five pages of my new comic called the war. Let me know what you think.

Tracy

Philadelphia Adventure Update 10-03-07

I realize I have been neglecting my Blogular duties as of late. I am trying to make up for it with an extra long post, so read on if you like, or ignore it and get on with your life. Here we go!
I would first like to state that I have not let our fancy new lifestyle and living with the fabulously wealthy change me at all. I am the same old Tracy Constantine that I was back in Elk Grove. Of course Laura reminded me this morning that I do introduce myself by the name Professor Pennypacker when I'm around people from our new place. Here is a picture of what I look like now, just to prove there hasn't been any changes.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's continue shall we? I took some photos on my walk around the University of Pennsylvania campus a few days ago. The school was founded in the 1700's by a man named Ben Franklin. There are a few statues of him around the campus, like classic Captain Kirk in Chair pose at the start of the blog post. I am truly impressed with this campus and how much it looks like Mr. Toads wild ride at Disneyland. Here are some pictures of the classic architecture. This campus just oozes fancy shmancyness at every corner. I am quite impressed. There are several people walking around talking on cell phones congratulating themselves at how awesomely rich they are all day long. This University is indeed a Rich Person factory. I assume they have a required course on caviar consumption and how to speak to the "Help".
I then found this statue. It seems like your every day run of the mill statue of a very important professor. That is until you look closer. If you'll take notice of his left foot. He is standing on a bat/snake demon thingy. I am not making this up. Here is a closer picture. I asked a very important looking man as he walked by what the deal was with the demon thing. His answer was exactly this "Hmm. I've never noticed that before. That's weird."
I then took a closer look at his face. It has the unmistakable expression of "Oh My Gosh, I think I just stepped in something awful" look. I have no idea what kind of symbolism this bat demon could be. Unless this professor conquered his demons? Like alcoholism, or gambling, or earning too many diplomas. Or perhaps it's a quite literal representation of when this man single footadly stomped these unholy bat demons out of existence. I suppose we may never know. Unless I were to Google it...but I don't have that kind of time!
Moving on. My daughter and I went to the UPenn museum of very old slightly damaged goods. It turned out to be quite dull. Except for a few highlights. Like these...
This guy wins the award for the best mustache of any of the former presidents of this museum. The closest runner up was a woman...Then we move on to this very cool crystal ball on top of a dragon. I looked into it and saw the future. Only about 20 minutes into the future, which isn't really very helpful. Maybe that's why it's here instead of in use somewhere.
Then there was the Egypt wing. It was pretty cool. Especially the MUMMY room! There were actual mummy's in there, which is a bit creepy. I bet when the Egyptian Priests were preparing the bodies for mummification they weren't expecting the final mummy's to be laid to an eternal rest in a Museum in Philadelphia. I found this skull to be particularly interesting. It had no markings or descriptions. It was simply a skull sitting with a plate and a book. I am assuming that his name was something very Egyptian, like Carl...and that we was reading a book and eating dinner when suddenly, he choked to death. His final wish was to have his head removed and sent to Philadelphia to rest in a museum. That's what I think anyway.
Then we move on to this guy. The only thing cool about this statue was that it confirmed my belief that the Romans had very cool hair.
The last cool thing about the museum was a bunch of gold coins from the Constantine empire days. I tried to explain to the guard why the coins should belong to me as my last name is Constantine. I even went as far as to say that I was sent here from the past to collect the coins for my Dad, the Emperor Constantine. The guard was busy on her cell phone so I simply moved on.
Which brings us to our last stop. The University of Pennsylvania stadium. You may not think that it is very significant. It's just an ordinary stadium where a very mediocre team plays football. You see that's where you are wrong. I explained before, this school was founded by Ben Franklin. At this very stadium Ben Franklin fought Thomas Jefferson in a gladiator match. Here is what I think it may have looked like.

I hope you have enjoyed this super sized edition of the Philadelphia Adventure! Stay Tuned for more!

Tracy

Independence Hall Part Deux

Laura's Aunt and Uncle Suzy and Stoney came out to visit us in Philadelphia a couple of weekends ago and we all went to Independence Hall. I am just now getting to the blog about it! The picture of our group is purposely missing our daughter. I don't want pictures of her on my blog for safety reasons. If you are family and would like to see the ones with her in them, let me know and I'll think about your individual security clearance status.
On to Independence! We actually made it in the building this time! I must say it was quite awe inspiring to stand in the same room that our fore fathers secretly planned the rebellion from England. I felt so inspired by their actions that I planed a rebellion from our tour group. I, unlike George Washington, could not get the rest of the tourists to unite for the greater tour good. It mostly consisted of me yelling things like "Give me liberty and get me a soda!" in the back of the group while people tried their best to hear the tour guide. It turns out that our tour guide was very knowledgeable and personable, so I can understand why no one followed me to freedom. I learned a valuable lesson on independence that day. I didn't write it down however and quickly forgot it. "Oh well", I sometimes think to myself when I strain to recall the lesson. Maybe next time I'll write it down, in big bold letters like my favorite declaration of independence signer, Herbie Hancock.
A very neat observation I did happen to hear is that the building was 60% original materials. I hope this part in this picture wasn't, because I accidentally hit it with the stroller, breaking it.
Standing in that very room I could almost feel the presence of some of the greatest men this country has ever seen. I could feel the hard wood floor beneath my feet, see the light as it poured into the room from the windows. Feel the same hot sticky air that hung in the air. Then I remembered all the layers of clothing they had to wear, and the aparent lack of bathing and deodorant...I could then almost smell the body odor (or it was the "Out of Town" couple standing next to me) and became overcome with a feeling of wanting to really get out of there.
If you happen to come to Philadelphia on a Cheese Steak excursion, don't miss Independence Hall. They serve very fine Cheese Steaks.