Not another Peep.

Monday, April 26th, 2021 12:04 pm.

So, I have this bird outside my house and it will  will not stop chirping, ever.

I’m starting to feel like Tippi Hedren.

This thing will not shut up. And  I am trying desperately to resist the urge to buy a gun and murder either it or myself .

I can’t even sleep anymore because it just won’t peepin’ shut up!  Neither of my cats have killed it yet. (What the hell am I even paying them for!?)

We also have tree frogs, and what the hell  is a tree frog? There are frogs who live in trees like Wookies!? I am no zoologist, so, sadly,  I can’t provide you with an answer to any questions about tree frogs.

(Maybe there is an old issue of Zoobooks you can find that tells you all about tree frogs you can read it,  and maybe it will explain what the hell they look like, and what they even are.)

The only thing I’ve learned about frogs is from playing the arcade game Frogger, which, I’m pretty sure, is not an accurate depiction of frogs, because,  if they  fall off a log in the game, they drown. (This was already pointed out by the guy who hosts Classic Game Room, but it bears repeating, because, I’m confident, frogs know how to swim.)

But the birds and the frogs have rotating shifts. The frogs torture me all night, and the birds torture me all day.

My grandfather used to love birds. You know why? Because he fought in World War II. And, when he got back, he couldn’t hear anything. So, he probably just thought they looked cute. If he had ever actually heard them he might have not have been quite as much of a bird enthusiast.

And speaking of peeping birds, Easter happened recently, and like many of you, I buy marshmallow Peeps  every Easter. I have a bunch of bunny Peeps right now and I always get get an entire package of marshmallow Peeps shaped like chickens. Then, I open it and eat one, forget to put plastic wrap or something over it, and the rest of them become fossilized and inedible.

But we live in a progressive era now, when  they make marshmallow Peeps for not just Easter but for almost every holiday. So, you can have a whole variety you can buy and forget to eat.

They have Halloween Peeps shaped like jack-o-lanterns, Christmas Peeps shaped like snowmen, they have Valentine Peeps shaped like hearts, ( which I buy just to burn, to represent my own melted heart.)

They probably even have turkey Peeps for Thanksgiving.

I think they should make Peeps for the more obscure holidays, like Arbor Day Peeps (shaped like trees, of course), Bastille Day, (I don’t what Bastille Day, is but they should make a Peep for it), Peeps shaped like gorillas for National Gorilla Suit Day. (Which, I swear to God, is a real thing)

They could even have Peeps shaped like people and call them Peeple!

They could make like a Kim Kardashian Peep, and sell millions of those to the millions of people who, inexplicably, like Kim Kardashian.

You could also do Peeps shaped like Trump, Biden, Sylvester Stallone, Abraham Lincoln, the list goes on.

Now that I think about it,  Peeples sounds a lot like Poppples. (I had a Popple tent when I was a kid, and it was awesome. )

So, happy belated Easter to all of you, my Peeps!

 

Pickle and “The Middle”

Sunday, April 25th, 2021 8:58 pm.

Back in the days of my misbegoten youth, I had a nickname, “Guy at Every Show,” because I went to every single punk show. I saw the Ataris and New Found Glory hundreds of times. (Nothing compared to the amount of times I saw Reel Big Fish and Less than Jake. I number those in the tens of thousands.) And that was fun.  But I also made some terrible mistakes, like, for example, going to college, falling for all the wrong girls, and buying a pickle from a Sheetz gas station.

The pickle thing is all the fault of the band, Jimmy Eat World. (This will make sense eventually, I hope.)

You see, when I was a freshmen, my college roommate, who is one of my best friends, and the guitar player in my band, loved Jimmy Eat World. He would wake up, and the first thing he would do was put on Jimmy Eat World or Nada Surf. This happened, literally, every day. So, those became like my emo/indie alarm clock. And even though I was more into ska punk bands like Reel Big Fish, Less than Jake, Sublime and Skankin’ Pickle  (And the only reason I’m mentioning Skankin’ Pickle is because pickles will tie into this column later)  I really grew into also liking stuff like Nada Surf and Jimmy Eat World too.

We saw them live multiple times. Once we saw Jimmy, with Weezer and Tenacious D!  Needless to say, that was amazing, and they all kicked ass.

We also saw Nada Surf, and had to drive back during a blizzard. (And if you know that band, you know they have a song called Blizzard  of ’77, so it was apropos.)

But there was this one time, we drove to  to see Jimmy Eat World, and we stopped at a Sheetz gas station on the way, to fuel up  and get some snacks. And I made the  apocalyptic  mistake of buying a pickle there.

Word of advice: Don’t EVER do that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pickles and I actually even own a stuffed animal of the Vlassic Pickle Stork.

But this was an evil pickle.

The pickle was delicious, but it it practically killed me. It was like being shot multiple times in the stomach.

I love spicy food, but I learned my lesson the hard way. One simple lesson learned, don’t eat something that might kill you right before you go to a rock concert.

So, here we are, going to see Jimmy Eat World, at the height of their popularity, and one of my trademarks back then was, when we would go to every show, I would get these plain white T-shirts, and write something  funny or ironic on them in black magic marker.

In this case, to give my friends a laugh, I just wrote “The Middle” on my shirt (because that was their big hit) to make it look like I was a poseur.

Of course, people  at the show thought I was being serious, and were like, “You know they have other songs, right?”  That  was funny.

But as great as Jimmy Eat World is, (“The Sweetness ” is amazing) it was hard to enjoy the show with a nuclear pickle detonating in my stomach.

Luckily for me, this was an emo show, which is way unlike the ska or  punk shows I was used to.  At those, you have to dance, and run around in a circle pit, crowd surf, and rescue girls from being molested.  That would have been hard to do with an atomic pickle in my stomach.

At  emo shows, you just sort of sway back and forth, and that I could handle.

So, even though I was in mind-numbing agony from the pickle, the show was still great, and I recommend seeing Jimmy Eat World if you ever get the chance.

Just don’t go to Sheetz beforehand. Or you might die young like a rockstar.