Let’s have a frank discussion here, Moosekateers.

This is not me being funny (although probably a lot of you think I wasn’t ever being funny in the first place), but I, Nick Moose, have decided to adopt a daughter.

And the reason I’m adopting is because I have a weird-ass heart condition that I wouldn’t want to pass on to anyone. It’s called Truncus Arteriosis, which sounds more like a heart condition that an elephant would have, and my doctor usually needs to use Venn diagrams to explain to me what the fuck it even is.

He’s been doing this for over a decade, and I still don’t understand what the fuck it is, but it I know it’s genetic, and sounds like something I shouldn’t  pass on to a kid.

I’ve had my body sliced apart by surgeons enough, and been in more hospitals that I can count. I have a scar on my chest, and whenever I have sex with a girl, and I take my shirt off, they are like, “What happened to you !?” (usually I just say it’s a knife wound. That makes me sound way more badass)

Anyway, this is all super depressing stuff to talk about in my column, wherein I usually prefer to talk about fun things, like video games and toys and manatees .

So, let us move on to the fun stuff, shall we?

I’m way too old to fantasize about the Sailor Scouts now. That would just be wrong. But when I was roughly the same age that they are, I thought they were super cute. I may be too old to date teenage girls in Catholic schoolgirl outfits now, but I still think the Sailor Moon show was an awesome cartoon.

It had the whole girl power vibe going for it, it had a bunch of monsters, and two talking cats. (Incidentally, I have two cats and both of them refuse to talk. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with them! Maybe they are just being jerks!)

The Sailor Scouts never ,ever, sailed anything. (Or, if they ever did, I don’t remember them doing it) So, I have no idea why they called them that.

They all went to the same school and had secret identities and represented different planets.

The main character was Sailor Moon, but there was also Sailor Mars (She was the bitchy, raven-haired one, who was my favorite, because, I guess, I just am naturally attracted to bitchy, raven-haired girls, who don’t like me)  Sailor Mercury, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Venus, and, then, later on, they brought in a couple of other Sailors  who were supposed to be lesbians, but we never knew that, because they weren’t allowed to say that they were gay, in the American version.

They do things differently in Japan. There were even characters who were supposed to be transexuals, but the American dubbed version disguised that too.  One time, someone was drinking coffee, on the show, but they edited it, to make it seem like it was hot chocolate instead, because whoever was editing it was, apparently, a Puritan or something.

Sailor Moon was one of the first anime shows they aired on Cartoon Network. The first was G-Force, then Speed Racer, then, of course, Dragon Ball Z,  which made Cartoon Network insanely popular when it was on the Toonami programing block.

I’d liked anime far before that, but I feel like Dragon Ball Z is what really made it annoyingly mainstream, to the point where you couldn’t walk through the mall without seeing some dork wearing some damn kimono with a picture of a Dragon Ball character on it, that they probably bought at Hot Topic.

Now, this is the internet, so, I know that the vast majority of people reading this probably are wearing kimonos adorned with Dragon Ball characters, and you probably all know that anime is usually adapted from Japanese manga, which always features girls and guys with impossibly huge eyeballs, and that the Japanese versions are absurdly violent and sexual.

But Sailor Moon was different because, it honestly, tugged at my heart strings. (As if  my heart needed one more problem. It was messed up enough already without getting it’s strings tugged!)  I actually cried, watching the ending of it, and I’m comfortable enough with my masculinity to admit that.

And I’m also man enough to admit that I shouldn’t have a son. Because my dad died when I was a kid, I never learned how to play football, or shoot a rifle, or a bazooka, or anything like that.  And I’m the last person who should ever give advice to a kid, regarding women, because, all my relationships have ended in apocalyptic disaster. So, I wouldn’t be able to give him any advice on women. (Not that I would have any problem with having a gay son! I can sympathize with him, because everyone thought I was gay, for years, back in my high school days  because no girls would go out with me.)

So, I decided I want a daughter. Even though I probably shouldn’t have a kid, because I’m a freelance writer and cartoonist, and neither of those jobs make anything even resembling money, and my friends tell me that having money is like a requirement for having a kid, or something.

Whatever, I’ll find a way. I’ll make it work! Even if it means going back to work at Dairy Queen, because someone needs to carry on the proud Moose Legacy!

I know she will grow up to be a strong, confident, badass superhero, just like her namesake.

To paraphrase the Sailor Moon theme song: Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by day light! Never running from a real fight, she is the one named SAILOR MOOSE!!

Here is an image of the first stuffed toys  I will buy for her:

Mooseheads, I  love  The Mandalorian.

John Favreu is one of the best humans ever. He is an  amazing director, and was great in the Iron Man and Avengers movies. And he was in Swingers!  (I LOVE SWINGERS!!) But now he’s “all growns up” and swingin’ in the Star Wars universe.  The guy is just an endless font of talent. He’s directing and writing The Mandalorian, which is  a show that actually makes Boba Fett look competent.

Of course, we all know who Boba Fett is. He was a bounty hunter in the movie, The Empire Strikes Back, who captures Han Solo, to take him to Jabba the Hutt. And everyone thought he looked super cool, but I, personally, always thought the lizard guy, standing next to him, was way cooler looking. (And, yes, I know the lizard guy’s name is Bossk. I was a geek before you were born) But, then, in the next movie, The Return of the Jedi, he just dies, stupidly, at the beginning of the movie, without even really doing anything.

For some reason, Boba Fett became ridiculosy popular, because of the way he looked.  And, as it turns  out, he was wearing  the armor of a Mandalorian, which is an order of bounty hunters. (We learned this information over 20 years later)

Now, here is a fun fact: Boba Fett first appeared in the Star Wars Holiday Special, that came out right after A New Hope, and in between when The Empire Strikes Back came out.

The Star Wars Holiday Special was terrible, and watching it might kill you.  It started with Wookies groaning at each other for over 20 minutes, and  Chewbacca’s father masturbating to holographic porn.

I know that sounds like a joke, but it happened.

The Special also had an interminably long musical number wherein Bea Arthur sang and danced with a bunch of aliens, in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and it ends with a clearly drugged up Carrie Fisher, singing words to the Star Wars theme music.  (This was the 70’s and all kinds of weird shit was going on)  The Boba Fett cartoon in the Special is universally considered to be the only part that doesn’t completely suck. Even though it was both horribly drawn and animated,  you could still tell that Boba Fett was supposed to be a badass. (If you ever do attempt to watch the Special, watch the Rifftrax version, although, even they couldn’t really make it enjoyable, but I do love those guys)

Now, Mooseheads, like most of you out there in internet land, I belong to over 150  different streaming services. The only reason I subscribe to Disney Plus is so I can watch The Mandalorian (and wobbly old black and white Mickey Mouse cartoons like Steamboat Willy) but The Mandalorian is really good. And I want to adopt “The Child.”  I would go so far as to say that it’s even ALMOST as good as the Star Wars play my friends and I put on in the eighth grade.

We didn’t have John Favreau as a director  (or any director at all) but we had gumption. And a sincere desire to get excused from class, so we could go and paint murals of Jabba the Hutt, instead of being in Math, not understanding what a multiplicative inverse was.

Moosefriends, we did this this before being a geek was trendy. So, there was absolutely no reason that we should  have put on an amateur production of the Return of the Jedi, but I guess we all must have suffered severe brain trauma at the same time, and decided we should do something that would insure none of us ever get girlfriends.

And we must have suffered that same brain trauma two times, because we actually put on the play TWICE; once in seventh grade and once in eighth grade!

Back before Star Wars and Superhero movies became popular again, there were exactly zero sexy, cosplay chicks in existence, who wanted to date guys like me, who like sci-fi and superhero shit. If they saw you in a Yoda costume, they would look at you with the same disdain normally reserved for looking at people who murder puppies. These girls would not even bother wasting their time on insulting you. They would just get away from you as soon as possible, if you attempted to talk to them.

We couldn’t even get an actual girl to play Princess Leia, so, our friend, Rob, did it. (He probably has blocked this traumatic experience from his memory)

But, getting back to the Star Wars play. The one we did in seventh grade was really bad, and I honestly don’t even remember anything about it, because nobody video taped it.

I have a recording of the eighth grade play and it was a fucking masterpiece. Shakespeare would have been proud of.

I put on a Master class performance.  I played Yoda, and Han Solo, AND The Emperor!

We had a carboard cutout playing R2-D2.

When we did the scene where the Emperor shot Luke Skywalker, I just kept pointing my finger at my friend who was playing him, and we had a guy flicking the light switch up and down in the classroom,  because, we thought, me, having actual lightening bolts shooting from my hands, might possibly endanger the other students.

Also, I had to memorize the entire Yoda death speech and try to say it through a shitty Yoda mask that I couldn’t breathe through, that I got at a  local Halloween store.

But one friend of mine, who played Boba Fett in our seventh grade production (See, this brings me back to The Mandalorian subject, so that’s why I talked about it ) insisted that we use actual pyrotechnics for Boba Fett shooting a flamethrower out of his arm.

See, they don’t let you do that kind of stuff in a classroom. Everyone of us understood that, but he didn’t. He kept saying “Pyrotechnics means CONTROLLED FIRE!!!”  And we would have to keep responding with things like, “Yeah, I get that, but they probably aren’t even gonna let us use any kind of fire in a Language Arts classroom, whether it’s controlled or not.” But he just didn’t understand that and  got pissed off and left. So, he wasn’t in our eighth grade production.

I hope he is doing well, and I am sorry that the rest of us hurt his feelings, by telling him that setting fires in school classrooms is not a thing they allow you to do.

I asked my one friend who it was we got to play Boba Fett in the second play, and he didn’t know, so he just told me to say Collin Hanks (the way less famous son of Tom Hanks) even though, I’m pretty sure, that isn’t right, but you can’t tell, because the kid is wearing a mask.

Also, for reasons known only to him, the kid playing Obi Wan Kenobi, inexplicably, started doing a Michael Jackson impression, in the middle of his final speech to Luke. I wish I could explain to you what that looked like, but I really can’t.

(Fun facts: The kid who played Obi Wan is now a monk, and the kid who played  Leia is now an ex-con bodybuilder.)

So, the last episode of the current season of The Mandalorian is coming up soon, and, thankfully, the last season of us putting on a Star Wars play is well in the past.

Mooseheads, it’s that time already! I’m gonna talk about ancient Hanna-Barbera cartoons again!

This is the second installment of my series of columns that I call “Journey to the bottom of the Hanna-bar-barrel,” the column series where I make fun of the dregs of the output of my favorite cartoon studio!

This one is about the Paw Paw Bears.

Back in the day, none of us 90’s tykes had ever heard of “robotripping,” but if you’d asked one of us to make an educated guess at what that term might mean, we’d probably have said, “Is that like when you stay home sick from school, and take a bunch of cough medicine, and watch the Paw Paw Bears?” and we would be right.

You see, the Paw Paw Bears was a part of a hellish block of Smurfs rip-off cartoons that used to air in the early afternoon, when all the kids, who were old enough to not claw their eyes out, upon seeing them, were already in school.

The Smurfs have recently had a shitty CGI reboot movie.  So, you all probably know that they are tiny blue gnomes, who live in mushrooms, and say the word “Smurf” constantly. Like, whereas one of us humans would scream “MOTHER FUCKIN’ ASS!!” in a fit of rage, a Smurf would yell, “MOTHER SMURFIN’ SMURF!!”

The Smurfs originated in Belgium, and Hanna-Barbera adapted them for American TV. They were, inexplicably, a massive success in the 80’s, and I had a lot of Smurf crap, as a kid, even though, as an adult, I can barely even listen to the theme song without wanting to kill myself.

One of the Smurfs rip offs, The Snorks, was awesome. It had a bunch of weird looking sea creature kids who had weird looking, snorkel-like things protruding out of their heads. And they were friends with some sort of an octopus guy.

This show was vastly different than the Smurfs, because, instead of saying “Smurf” all the time, they said “Snork” all the time, like “MOTHER SNORKIN’ SNORK!”

All of these shows used to be on the USA Cartoon Express. (Which was kind of like the Cartoon Network before the Cartoon Network existed.)

Now, don’t mistake me, friends. Some of these shows did, in fact, suck more than others. (The Shirt Tales really sucked) but only one of them seemed to base the entirety of its premise on a deleted, peyote- induced, hallucination scene from Oliver’s Stone’s movie about The Doors.

That show was the Paw Paw Bears, and it was a delusional attempt to cash in on the popularity of both the Smurf craze, and the Care Bears craze, of the 80’s. Well, technically, the name of the show was just “Paw Paws,” but THE Paw Paw Bears is what I called it, back in my fever-induced, cough medicine-fueled hazes, on those long ago sick days, and I’ll be damned if I stop saying the “The” now.

It is quite possibly the only Care Bears rip off I can immediately think of, where the bears are all Native Americans, who worshipped talking totem poles, and fought a bear witch, who was riding on a vacuum cleaner, had the voice of Ruth Buzzi, and was named “Aunt Pruney.”

Anyway, the show was terrible, and unwatchable, but they made toys about it, anyway, because they made toys out of every cartoon that was on TV in the 80’s.  And, even though the show sucked, and I hated it, I would probably still buy all the toys on ebay, just  because there are a lot of things wrong with me. (For example, I just wrote a 600 word long column about the Paw Paw Bears, instead of writing about King Lear, or some other work of fiction that was actually significant)

See you next time, Hanna-Barbarians!  Until then, I’ll leave you with with this  picture of the the Paw Paw Bears  stuffed animals, and other assorted Paw Paw Bear  merchandise:

OK, all ears here, Moosekateers. I’ve got some important information for you.

This is not some urban legend or something.

There is ACTUALLY a video game called CHICKEN POLICE! And another one named FIGHT CRAB!

Now, the first rule about  Fight Crab, is that we talk about Fight Crab, incessantly.  As one of the proud five people who bought this game on the Nintendo Switch download store, I can attest to all of you Mooseheads out there that playing it is a transcendental experience.

To my great shame, I am not allowed to eat crustaceans. But I didn’t find this out until throwing up, after eating a shrimp, after buying the first issue of War Machine, at my local grocery store, when I was like, ten. (Yes, I did, in, fact buy the first issue of War Machine off of a spinning comic book rack at a grocery store in the 90’s. I’m old) You can still see puke stains on the holofoil cover of my copy of the first issue of War Machine. (And if you don’t know what a holofoil comic book cover is, you clearly weren’t alive in the 90’s)

I don’t know if being allergic to shrimp means I can eat crabs or lobsters, or not, but I am not willing to risk chancing it.  I am, however, sure as fuck, willing to spend money on a video game where lobsters and crabs beat the shit out of each other, for no reason.

One of my favorite Godzilla movies (even though it is consistently praised as one of the worst) is Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, where my boy, Godzilla, fights a giant shrimp, and kills it. I always thought it was a lobster that he was fighting, but I found out later in life that it’s supposed to be a shrimp, and that its name is Ebirah. (None of this is mentioned in the American version. Somethings get lost in translation between the Japanese versions and the American translations of Godzilla movies )

Godzilla fighting a shrimp might sound like an unfair fight, but this was an enormous shrimp, who was guarding an island with evil communists on it. (Incidentally, “Jumbo Shrimp” has got to be one of my favorite oxymorons)

I haven’t checked yet to see if you can fight shrimp in Fight Crab. I don’t even know if shrimp are crustaceans. I don’t know a lot of factual information about sea creatures. I don’t even know how to spell the word “crustacean.” I had to Google it. I also draw a comic book about a blue porpoise, who plays in a punk band, and has a pink manta ray-shaped guitar that shoots lasers and explodes things, which is one of the many reasons I got kicked out of marine biology school. Those bastards told me that wasn’t accurate! What do they know!?  (Well, more stuff than I do, apparently)

Anyway, Fight Crab is like Mortal Kombat, if Mortal Kombat had crabs. ( See what I did there?) There’s even blood spurting everywhere, when you rip off another crab’s leg! They could have called it Mortal Crab-bat!

Me, describing it, will not do it justice, so, just go and download it on Switch.

Now, I have to talk about Chicken Police.

Fun fact: there used to be a TV Cartoon in the 90’s (I’m talking about the 90’s a lot today for some reason) called Fish Police. It was based on a pretty cool comic book, which was like a film noir, but with fish. Nobody watched the show, and it was instantly cancelled.  Now, years later, someone decided to switch up the formula, and make it about chickens instead.

Another Fun Fact: I have never eaten at a Chick-fil-A.  (But I plan to. It’s on my bucket list)

I do love chicken, and I especially love KFC.  I  love it so much that I just put in a bid on Ebay for a Christmas album recorded by Colonel Sanders. (That isn’t a joke. Colonel Sanders actually had a Christmas album. Google it.)

So, when I saw a review of Chicken Police, I INSTANTLY spent twenty bucks on downloading it. I have absolutely no idea if it’s any good, or not, because I haven’t played it yet, but it is about chickens in trench coats, solving crimes.  So, of course, I needed to own it.

From what I’ve seen on review sites, it t looks like there’s a cat in it too. I’ll post a picture below.

So, the moral of the story is : Go buy Fight Crab and Chicken Police. Even if you don’t play them, it will make you  feel like a better person, just to know that you own games with names like that.

See ya here next time, Moosekateers!

Remember that Jim Carrey movie, The Mask ?  It was cool, and funny, and had an overall aesthetic that was based on him acting like a cartoon character from a Tex Avery cartoon.

If you don’t know who Tex Avery is, there is something deeply wrong with you.  He was a director at Warner Brothers Studios. (You know, the studio who invented Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and they have that big water tower where they imprison Yakko, Wacko, and Dot?)

Tex Avery started out at Warner Brothers, but eventually moved on to MGM studios, where he directed a lot of amazing cartoons, some of which were about this wolf, who was horny for this singer, who was a hot chick, who was dressed like a sexy version of Little Red Riding Hood.

They based The Mask character in the Jim Carrey movie on that style, where he was like a live action version of the cartoon wolf. (And Jim Carrey is, basically, a live action cartoon character anyway, so, it made sense).

But The Mask was also based on a couple of other things. One was an insanely violent comic book from the 90’s, where different people put on the mask, and go crazy and kill people.

A lot of people know that, but fewer people know that comic was based on an obscure 1960’s horror movie called The Mask, which was about a guy who worked in a museum, and got obsessed with a mask there.  Whenever he would see the mask, it would say to him “PUT THE MASK ON NOW! PUT THE MASK ON NOW!” over and over, until he put it on. Then, when did, he would go insane and see visions of skulls and hellish demons, and end up murdering people. (I’m super proud that I own a VHS copy of the movie, hosted by Elvira, that came with 3-D glasses!) Anyway, there’s an actual reason I just said all that, even though this column was supposed to be about steak sandwiches.

You see, Moosefriends, I get pissed off at guys, who make steak sandwiches, without wearing masks.

Today I went to my local Original Philly Cheese Steak Company, or whatever the fuck they are called, where I had pre-ordered a sandwich and some fries, with Cheez Whiz on them. (Who doesn’t love Cheez Whiz?) I know Cheez Whiz is a traditional topping on Philly Cheese Steaks.

Now listen up, Moosekateers. I love Philadelphia, I love the Rocky movies, and Boy Meets World, both of which are set in Philadelphia .

But, when I went to pick up my sandwich and fries, the asshole working there wasn’t wearing a mask! I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do in this situation.  I had already paid for the sandwich, and I was too busy admiring the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga arcade machine, in the corner of the store, to even realize he wasn’t wearing a mask, at first. (Incidentally, I was wearing my awesome checkerboard mask)

So, I didn’t even say anything. I left the store, with the possibly contaminated steak and Cheese Whiz. But, then, when I got back to my house, I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

Now, I’m no germaphobe, friends. I’m sick all the time, and I’ll probably be dead anyway, within seconds, due to alcohol abuse, or the stupid heart condition I was born with, or the fact that I severely suck at piloting an automobile.  So, I don’t really care what happens to me. I just don’t want to inflict this virus on anyone else.

So, I did what I do with old, moldy food in the refrigerator, that I forgot to eat, and threw it into the woods behind my house. I usually do that to give some food to hungry animals, like raccoons, manatees, and humpbacked whales.  But, since manatees and humpbacked whales are not indigenous to rural Ohio, raccoons, most likely, ate it.

I instantly regretted that decision. Because now, innocent racoons are probably eating contaminated Cheez Whiz.

So, congratulations, steak sandwich guy. You probably just gave a whole bunch of raccoons Corona virus.

I am gonna post something angry, on Yelp, about this.

Has this ever happened to you, Mooseheads?

You pass out on the couch after binge watching something (and binge drinking something), and Netflix goes to “Menu”, and, then, eventually, at around six  in the morning, it develops a mind of its own, and just decides to turn itself off, and go back to regular TV?
I’m not saying I’ve personally experienced this. OK, truth be told, I AM saying I have personally experienced this, because it just happened to me, literally, two minutes ago, and because that’s what this column is about. 
But the  the really weird thing is, when it goes back to “Live TV,” it’s a different, randomly selected channel, every time.  Most of them are channels I’ve never even watched or heard of in my whole entire life. 

I used to love TV, Moosefriends, but, let’s face it. The halcyon days of TV are over. It just sucks now. 

The only channel I watch is the CW, (even though it’s consistently ranked as the lowest rated network in the history of TV) and I watch it because I like superheroes, vampires, and I have an irrational obsession with teen drama shows. Maybe because, when I was a teen, I was  too busy putting on amateur Star Wars plays, and making comic books, to date anyone.

Also, because no girl would date me. Their LOSS! Now that it’s trendy to like comic books, and Star Wars and shit like that, they probably wish they would have MARRIED me, just so they could look cool!

OK,  I’ve gotta stop ranting about my tragic teen years, because, if I don’t, I’ll never stop, and this column has already totally gone of the rails. Those rails had a train on them that was heading towards my original point, which was, when my Netflix turns off, it always goes to some random channel showing some weird- ass thing. 

This morning, it was an infomercial, which, I swear, was about wrapping rubber bands around kazoos, to hunt ducks. When I watch Netflix, I have it on really loud, so when it goes off, and regular TV comes on, the duck hunting kazoos wrapped in rubber bands are blaring at me, at roughly 9,000 decibels. 

Sometimes, it’s not that bad. Sometimes, it will randomly go to the Sci -fi channel (Which I REFUSE to call “SYFY”), but the crazy thing is, at 6 in the morning,  “SyFy” actually shows GOOD stuff, like The Twilight Zone. So, I can wake up to Rod Serling, and killer dolls, and horrific gremlins, and disturbing mannequins coming to life in a department store.

This is way better than the blaring kazoos, but still not something I want to hear, or watch, at six in the morning.  

Sometimes, it’s a news show about Donald Trump (which is something I never want to hear, or watch, at any time on any day), and, recently, there was a PBS kids show with shrill-voiced cartoon children explaining about how sow bugs are actually crustaceans and not bugs, which was useful information, but, again, an example of something I don’t want to hear or watch when I’m trying to sleep.

Sometimes, it’s an extremely loud religious show, telling me that I’m going to Hell. (I thought I was already there!)

So, as a public service announcement, I’m telling all you Moosefriends, DO NOT FALL ASLEEP WITH NETFLIX ON YOUR TV!! It will eventually turn itself off, and you WILL wake up to the dulcet tones of  blaring duck kazoos! 

OK, now, I’m gonna go back to sleep. 

OK, COVID has gone too far this time.

It killed the guy who invented Slim Jims.

Now, all of you MooseHeads out there know, the three most important things you buy when you go to the gas station are beer, Sour Patch Kids, and Slim Jims. (Sometimes you also remember to buy gas). Sometimes, Jack Link’s  Beef Jerky, as well, and pork rinds.

No offense to any vegan MooseFriends out there. I don’t hate you, it’s just that I am obscenely fond of meat. I believe God put certain animals on this planet, specifically, to be eaten, which sucks for them, but it’s great for us.

I mean, how can you go through life without eating BACON!?

Meat is also used as a powerup in a lot of video games, like in Castelvania, where you grab the pork chops, which look more like chicken legs or ham than pork chops, but every single person on the internet has talked about that already, so I’m not going to.  (Whoops. I guess I just did)

The point of that is that meat gave Simon Belmont the power to defeat fucking DRACULA! Meat gives us POWER!!!  I mean, animals eat other animals, so why shouldn’t we? Humans ARE, in fact, animals!

And I LOVE animals! I just wrote a sixteen bajillion long word column about my cats. But, guess what! They eat animals! It’s what God intended. And we should honor the noble sacrifice of these creatures by eating them, because they taste good.

Now, Slim Jims were actually invented by another guy, not the guy I’m talking about, but that other guy died a long time ago. The guy I’m talking about, who just kicked the bucket from COVID, was the guy who perfected the recipe, and gave us the fucking amazing version of Slim Jims we know and love today.

This guy was named Alonzo “Lon” T. Adams II” (I’m just as surprised as you are to find out the guy who invented Slim Jims, as we know them, has Roman Numerals after his name).  He died at the ripe old age of 95, and he lived as a hero, a patriot, and a visionary.

He was shot in the fucking HEAD in World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge and yet still soldiered on to perfect the perfect Slim Jim formula!

Slim Jims may seem, to the casual observer, like they are just beef jerky sticks, but those of  us in the know are aware that it’s not just beef. They also have “mechanically separated chicken” in them. I don’t know what the Hell that means, but I’d like to believe it involves chicken corpses being ripped apart by robots.

As many of us old fogeys may recall, back in the 90’s, the wrestler, Macho Man Randy Savage, was the spokes-wrestler for Slim Jims, and the company made hundreds of thousands of commercials with him, saying, “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!”

Now, just to be upfront with you Moosekateers, I never have been a wrestling fan, but I like Randy Savage (May he rest in peace). He had a great, gruff sounding voice, and he did voices on cartoon shows, like Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Dexter’s Laboratory, and made commercials promoting mechanically separated chicken/ beef sticks.

They later had another mascot, who was just a dick, who was dressed in a Slim Jim costume, and punched people in the face if they didn’t eat them. That ad campaign was not as sucessful.

But let us not not focus on the negative, my friends. Let us celebrate the great legacy of  Alonzo “Lon” T. Adams II, and “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!”   And satisfy our meat tooths.

Now, this probably comes as no surprise to many of you long-term Mooseheads, but I used to be the singer in a punk band.

Don’t try to find any video footage of my band. This was pre-YouTube (Thank God)

For you whipper-snappers who are too young to remember what a punk band is, it’s like a normal band,  except the people in the band can’t play their instruments or sing.

To be fair this isn’t true of every punk band. Mostly just the amateur ones. The one thing that qualifies  you as a punk band is that you play really loud, and the guitar is used as a percussion instrument.

My guitar player, who was my college roommate and one of my best friends, was actually too talented to be in a punk band, and that sort of fucked things up, because he was playing actual chords. (I kept telling him to practice sucking at guitar, but he refused).

So, we were sort of a mix of punk and power pop. Don’t ask  me to explain what power pop is. It’s  basically music that sounds like the early Beatles music does. It was a whole genre, but for some reason, everyone decided they hated this band, The Knack, (even though they are awesome), and the genre died.

But, even though he was good at guitar, we were still loud and obnoxious and terrible.  And “pop punk” bands were very popular at the time, (Bands like Green Day and Blink 182) and those bands were influenced by some of our favorite bands, like Screeching Weasel, The Queers ( The Queers aren’t homosexual. They have a song with a chorus that says  “Yummy, Yummy punk rock girls”), and the Mr. T. Experience, which was pretty much our main influence. The singer, Dr. Frank, was incapable of writing a song that wasn’t about a girl.

Like I said, in a previous column,  my all-time favorite band is still Reel Big Fish, and they have a song called “Don’t Start a Band,” which is a good segue into what I’m going to be talking about.

Reel Big Fish was right. I love music, but being in a band is a fucking nightmare.

We named our band The Attractive Distractions, because, on the first day of college at Kent State University, the President of the School told us, “Beware of attractive distractions.” (Good advice) Anyway, I consider “Attractive Distractions” to be a euphemism for girls, because girls attract me, and distract me.

So we ignored Reel Big Fish’s advice and stupidly started a band.

And I wrote tons of songs about girls. (I like girls.)

Some of the song titles were:

Victoria (About a girl who wouldn’t go out with me in high school.)

She Doesn’t Like it When You Like Her. (About a girl who wouldn’t go out with me in college because she turned out to be a lesbian.)

And, “My Friend’s Girlfriend’s Sister (About a girl I dated who I had to stop dating because my friend threatened to murder me if I went anywhere near her.)

So, inspired by “The Mr. T Experience” ( Who are awesome and you should listen to them. They are an amazing band  that’s been around for 30 years and has sold a record for every one of them), we embarked on a mission to bring the Portage County area concise, amusing, two-minute pop punk rock girl songs, at a low, low price, and get laid.

At some point, I’m pretty sure we accomplished at least one of those things (and one time we almost opened for Wheatus! Yeah, I know you don’t who they are, and, to be honest, I don’t really remember them either), but then our drummer moved, and our bass player got a better offer from Papa John’s Pizza. The Attractive Distractions has been on hiatus ever since.

I’ll admit, as of right now, we may not have a rhythm section, and we may not have any recorded songs, but we sure as fuck have hundreds of ass-loads of already made-up buttons, with our logo on them!  And I ask you folks, is rock ‘n roll really about recording songs and scoring hits, or is it about  having ass-loads of buttons?

Our logo is from the crappy 1960’s beach party/ rock n roll / horror movie about a guy who dresses up in a fish monster suit, and kills teenage girls in bikinis, called The Beach Girls and The Monster. 

If you’d like a button with that image on it (image is pictured bellow), let me know! I’ll send you like 50!