Blink-182 – "All the Small Things" (2000)

Keep your head still

I’ll be your thrill

The night will go on

My little windmill

(“My little windmill”?  Don’t worry – I’ll explain that line later.)

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Have you heard about Blinkist?

Blinkist is a $99-a-year subscription service that provides summaries of best-selling nonfiction books to people who don’t have a lot of time on their hands.

The idea behind Blinkist is that a subscriber can get the benefits of reading an entire book in just 15 minutes – which is how long it takes to read or listen to a typical book summary, or “blink.”

Blinkist’s book list is dominated by self-improvement tomes – it has blinks on how to be more successful in your career, or how to be more successful in your relationship.

So if you’re a person who not only wants to have a better life, but wants to have a better life in just 15 minutes, Blinkist may be for you.

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I know about Blinkist because they run the following commercial constantly on Sirius/XM radio:

Female (with awe in her voice): It’s such a beautiful night.  Look at the stars!

Male: They’re amazing.  Did you know twenty percent of stars have planets orbiting them capable of sustaining life?

Female: How did you know that!?  You must spend a ton of time reading.

Male: Not at all!  I use Blinkist.

Female: Blinkist?

Male: It’s an app that takes key insights from over 4000 non-fiction bestsellers and gathers them into 15-minute “blinks” for you to read or listen to!  With Blinkist, you can learn the main points of an entire book in just 15 minutes.

FVO: What kind of books?  

MVO: Nonfiction books in over 27 categories, from personal development to history, management, investing, philosophy, and more!  Blinkist makes it easy to learn about pretty much anything.

Female (teasing): Like the stars?  (She giggles.)

Male: Even the stars. (He laughs.)

You really need to hear the Blinkist commercial – you don’t get the full effect from the printed page.

But trust me – it’s obvious that the young lady in that commercial is simply ga-ga over the guy’s astronomical expertise.  Forget whether he drives a fancy car, or is a snappy dresser, or looks like a young Brad Pitt.  The fact that he knows how many solar systems have planets that are capable of sustaining life gets her all hot and bothered.

You’d better believe that I’m kicking myself today that I never shared my deep knowledge of astronomy with my dates.  I had no idea what a turn-on it would have been!     

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I’ve decided to launch a service that will compete with Blinkist.

It’s better than Blinkist in two important ways:

First, IT’S FREE!

Second, unlike Blinkist, you don’t have to decide which book summaries to read or listen to – I do the work for you!

Here’s how it works.  You call me up, and I talk for 15 minutes or so about something that interests me.  I might tell you about a book I just read, or a movie or TV I just watched – or tell a long, convoluted story about a girl I knew in high school that I’m still obsessed with.  

Or I might just go on a rant about politicians, or robocalls, or something else that annoys me.

Trust me – if my topic is something that interests me, it is something that will interest you!

(Did I mention that my service is FREE?)

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Blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge wrote “All the Small Things” for his longtime girlfriend, Jenna Jenkins, who he referred to as “my little windmill”:

I had to write her a song, because I wrote songs about other girls, but I haven’t written one for her.  So I was kinda getting some heat for that.  Not really though, because I love my girlfriend, so I was like, “I need to write a rad song” because I was scared – if the song came out bad, my girlfriend would be pissed.  So I kinda warned her that it would come out bad.  Then it came out good, so I was happy.

“All the Small Things” was released in 2000, and it seems to have worked – Tom and Jenna got married in 2001.

“My little windmill”

But in 2019, they got divorced.  (I guess he should have written her another song.)

Click here to see the official music video for “All the Small Things.”  (After watching it, I have to believe that Blink-182’s members are a bunch of tools.)

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

blink-182, "All the Small Things" (1999)

Say it ain't so

I will not go

As a member of the American Bar Association, I get weekly e-mails from the ABA Journal.  

I usually just ignore them.  But last week's e-mail had links to a number of intriguing stories.

Here's the headline of one of those stories:

Traffic stop brings 3 enemas, 2 X-rays and 1 colonoscopy in cops' fruitless drug search, suit says

The whole thing started when David Eckert got pulled over by police when he ran a stop sign in the parking lot at a Walmart in Deming, New Mexico.

The police officer who stopped Eckert patted him down and began to question him.  Other officers brought in a drug-sniffing dog to go over Eckert's car, and then seized the vehicle when the dog indicated there were drugs in it.  (Police subsequently found no drugs in the car.)

The police were suspicious because Eckert appeared to be clenching his buttocks tightly after he stepped out of his car.  So one of the officers got a search warrant that authorized an anal cavity search, and took Eckert to the emergency room at the local hospital.

The Eckert search warrant

The ER physician on duty refused to perform the anal cavity search.  But that didn't stop Deming's finest, who transported Eckert to a hospital in Silver City, New Mexico – which is a mere 52 miles away from the Deming hospital.

The medical staff of the Silver City hospital was more cooperative than the doctor at the Deming ER.  They first did an X-ray – which was negative – then performed a digital rectal exam, and felt "something soft."  (Ewwwww!)

The Silver City hospital went on to do a second digital rectal exam (negative), three enemas (searching for narcotics in Eckert's bowel movements each time but finding none), a second X-ray (negative), and a colonoscopy (negative).

To add insult to injury, the hospital billed Eckert for the procedures.

Eckert's lawyer said there was no probable cause for the search warrant, that the search warrant wasn't valid in the county in which the second hospital was located, and that it had expired before the colonoscopy was performed.  

He filed suit against the city, the county, the second hospital, and several individual law-enforcement officers and doctors.  (One of the doctors who was being sued had a very cool name: Okay H. Odocha.)

My favorite line from Eckert's complaint is when it alleged that, after each of the enemas, Eckert was forced to have a "bowl movement" in the presence of both a nurse and one of the policemen.  (Since "bowl movement" appeared three times in the complaint, I don't think we're talking about a typo, boys and girls.)  

Click here if you'd like to read the complaint.  It not only makes entertaining reading, but could come in handy if the police ever have you anally searched, enema'd, and colonoscoped.  (No need to waste money on a lawyer – just change the names and dates and use Eckert's complaint.)

Eckert was awarded $1.6 million.  I'd gladly put up with all the stuff he put up with for $1.6 million – wouldn't you?

"All the Small Things" was the second single from blink-182's 1999 album, Enema of the State.  It was a big hit for the San Diego-area pop punk band, peaking at #2 – that's right, I said #2 – on the UK singles chart.

Here's "All the Small Things":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: