The BeanMon

Some of you may be listening to my American Idol podcasts. Some of you may not. If you are listening, you might be wondering who this "Andy Thompson" is who is the host of the show. I thought I'd dedicate a little post to him so you'd know how I know him and why I'd want to talk AI with him once a week.

I have no idea why they call him BeanMon. Maybe when he was little they called him "Andy Beans" and it progressed from there? He is the youngest of five boys so who knows. Several of them have these nicknames that have changed over time many, many times. One of them has a nickname solely based on a word they said funny one time. Another has had at least 5 different nicknames. . . one of which was so prevalent that when he gave a talk in church, the program listed his nickname rather than his real name.

Anyway, I met the BeanMon shortly after Gty & I were married at their Grandma's funeral (so yeah, he's Gty's cousin). I wanna say Andy was about 11 or 12. He wasn't shy but he didn't talk much. I remember, at some point, going across the street from the funeral home with he & his brothers to get some Arby's or something. Good times. Good times.

Cut to 1998. Andy is now 13. A little taller but I could still take him in basketball. We had moved to Lafayette, IN to attend Purdue (not me, Gty) and, since Andy's fam lived a mere 3 hours away up in Chicago, we would go there all the time. Probably not every weekend but at least once a month, sometimes twice and there were probably a couple months we went three times. It probably would have been more often but Aunt Marilyn wouldn't let us bring Maggie up. This was the first time we hadn't lived near family so we loved going up there and hanging out. This was when we became addicted to the Game Show Network which was still relatively new. We would stay up until 5am watching old game shows and new fangled ones. We would pray a Card Shark would come on soon and cringe when it was the Love Buffet. Of course we would watch whatever was on, but some were more enjoyable than others.

This picture was taken our last weekend there before we moved to Albany, NY. BeanMon is now 15 and I'm pretty sure I couldn't take him in basketball anymore. Some of my favorite Andy stories during this time was one time, during class at school, Andy decided that a girl was taking a little too much time on her oral report. He wrote "END IT" on a piece of paper and held it up. What the?

He also wore the same orange t-shirt every day until a teacher noticed... he may have even turned it inside out and wrote something like "I lost my dog" on it with a permanent marker. I can't remember... point is he was a quirky kid.

We also heard stories of his "Survivor Parties" he would throw. He would invite tons of people over and every half hour or whatever they would take a vote and vote someone OUT OF THE PARTY. That person would literally have to leave the party and not come back. I hope no one had self-esteem issues because of that.




Speaking of dogs, whenever we went up there we would have to leave on Sunday afternoon in order to get back in time to get Maggie from the kennel without having to pay and extra day. So we'd be getting ready to leave and Andy would be like "Don't leave yet. Why are you leaving? It's the dumb dog, isn't it." It made us feel loved in a weird sort of way.



I post the above badly scanned picture so you can see Val/Otto Valez/Tito/Ted/Tad's "shockingly nice" hair we discussed in my last podcast. The ladies loved it, apparently.

This pic was taken in 2001 at their oldest bro's wedding in Chicago. We flew in from NY for the big event. At this point all the older brothers are realizing, much to their chagrin, that Andy will be the tallest of the bunch.


A couple years later we get this gem in the mail. BeanMon's senior photo. He doesn't know how to play the guitar so...... lollerz.



Below are pics taken in 2004. Gty's side of the family has a big reoon every other year in which they play games like steamroller and "pull the little kid on the saucer by a rope & hope they don't fall off." You can see Andy there on the left and me in the middle.



Apparently our team was Number One? ::woot woot:: I believe this was the reunion when I ran the 100 yard dash and fell on my face across the finish line. It was awesome.



He then served a mission to California... Riverside? Can't remember. They used to joke before he left that rather than go and converting people, he was gonna focus his energy on ridding the church of its annoying members. I wasn't at his homecoming so I don't know if he ended up taking that route but I'm guessing no.

Below is a recent pic I stole off his bro's facebook. Andy is still TC (too cool) for Facebook apparently. That dood on the left is Judd... host of J-Walking. I may be doing a post on him soon if Andy doesn't straighten up and recognize. What am I talking about? Why was Markie a bit confused during our last podcast?

Facts: I have been on his TBB Morning Show several times. When listing off his "core" contributers, he failed to mention me. I sent him a text to let him know I heard his neglect. The following is our exchange: (I'm in green)

I love my iPhone, btw. Bite your tongue!

So there's the BeanMon.