You just made my list!

Boy, it really makes me mad when I’m watching the news and some reporter is talking about a murder or a fire and everything is going smoothly until, EL WHAMO, they sign off by pronouncing their name all Spanishy. They go from sounding like Sandra Bullock to rolling their Rs like Charo at the drop of a sombrero.

I’m sitting there eating a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats thinking everything is dandy and the next thing I know, my head is spinning trying to keep all these languages straight! I mean, what gives these people the right to pronounce their own names correctly? The unimaginable arrogance of some people!

This is NOT an example of what I’m talking about but… well… you know.

Buckle up because you WILL have nightmares tonight.

I don’t like puppets. I especially don’t like puppets from the 70s and 80s. OK, I guess the puppets of Sesame Street were badass (not that piece of shit Elmo) but most other puppets from that era look like fucking burn victims. Burn victims who want to lure you into their van and stick you in a secret room under their back yard. I’m amazed that the children’s programming I watched as a kid didn’t cause me to go crazy and kill my parents in their sleep.

Let’s start with a show that, sadly, I grew up watching, Gigglesnort Hotel. In this hotel, a human named B.J. is forced to live and work with a dragon named “Dirty,” a bell boy named “Weird,” a faceless hunk of clay named “Blob” and a bunch of other freakish puppets. Truth be told, it’s a pretty shitty hotel and I can’t imagine it getting more than 1.5 stars on Yelp. I would also like to mention that occasionally a bad guy shaped like a lemon would throw bad jokes out of a helicopter and cause anyone who read the jokes to become horribly deformed. But have no fear, “Weird” would become a superhero named “The Shusher” whose only power was to quietly shush people. WHAT? My parents are lucky they got out alive.

Gigglesnort Hotel

One of the best ways to make a puppet creepy is to give it human hands. I can’t figure out how old these horrible creatures from Peppermint Park are supposed to be. They look like they belong in the AARP and yet the sight of bubbles sends them into an excited frenzy. I also like that they suggest putting newspapers on the floor before blowing bubbles indoors. Huh? Is that because the excitement is going to cause you to shit your little puppet pants?

Peppermint Park

I vaguely remember Outerscope II but I think I have pushed it way way back into that dark part of my brain that tries to forget such horrible things. In this scene, Henry, who looks like a young George Costanza, falls in love with a rocking horse and fucks it in the ass while the other children read a diary entry about a dying Indian. Hurry kids, you’re going to be late for school!

Outerscope II

This clip is supposed to prevent house fires but if I saw this as a kid the first thing I would do is burn my house down to keep the demons away. This clip reminds me of this fetish.

And this brings us to the perfect storm of creepy…
Puppets + Clowns + Jesus + Hugs = Your worst childhood memory.

No, not me. My wiener is as wonderful and sperm-filled as it always has been. Sorry, I’ve had a busy week and have neglected my writing duties, or writing “dooties” depending on your opinion of me. Watch this and get over it.

P.S. YouTube can suck my un-vasectomied dick for not allowing embedding on this clip!

Hey, when I asked for a beer I didn’t think you were going pour it so fast that it would shoot out the other side of the glass all over my slacks. I have a very important sales seminar to attend his afternoon and beer-soaked slacks do not make a good first impression.

AHHHHHHH, you just blinded me when you slammed your Extreme Shrimp Blaster into that hot butter! I SEE NOTHING! WHY?!?

And I just got this shirt too. It’s impossible to wash out butter, especially when you’re BLIND, thank you very much Steve! Man, this is the worst lunch ever. Whoa, what just hit me in the face? Was that salad? Did someone just throw a fucking salad into my face? What is wrong with you people?

I won’t even try to be a smart ass today because I am genuinely sad about the death of Harvey Pekar and don’t really want to make a joke out of it.

I also don’t feel like going into a long explanation of who Harvey Pekar is because I’m assuming most of you already know and quite honestly I don’t think I can do him justice with my half-assed attempt at an obituary. If you haven’t read American Splendor I command you to do so! I don’t even like comic books or illustrated novels but I love American Splendor! Likewise, if you have not seen the brilliant movie about Harvey, also titled American Splendor, you should watch it immediately.

Like most people, I was first introduced to Harvey Pekar via his confrontational Letterman appearances. If you are unfamiliar or a little younger than me, you need to keep those appearances in context. First of all, television had never seen anything like Late Night with David Letterman. It seems commonplace now but at the time Letterman’s antics were groundbreaking and shocking. He pushed the limits of what could be done on TV, specifically the limits of how entertaining the mundane could be. You simply did not see people on a major network dedicating entire segments to throwing things off a five-story building or stupid tricks performed by animals.

Now, add a cranky comic book writer from Cleveland who didn’t give a shit that he was biting the hand that feeds with every appearance and it was impossible to turn away. Again, this was decades before the TV was filled with self-destructive reality “stars” and it was fascinating to witness.

Like Letterman, Pekar pulled high drama out of the seemingly mundane. He simply told the story of his day to day life in comic book form, warts and all. Mostly warts. He was an outsider artist who managed to poke his head into the mainstream from time to time but only long enough to make himself uncomfortable, then it was back to obscurity at his hospital job in Cleveland. His books are incredibly engaging but as I sit here trying analyze why I feel that way I can’t come up with a reason. I mean he writes about riding the bus and working as a filing clerk but somehow you can’t wait for the next page.

I’m trying to think of some big smart-sounding way to end this but I guess it makes more sense to just say I’m glad people like Harvey Pekar exist.

Harvey’s first Letterman appearance. He came out swinging from the beginning. (Bad audio in some parts)
Part 1

Part 2

Things were still going OK at this point.

This gets a little bumpy.

Possibly Harvey’s last Letterman Appearance in 1993

If I wasn’t sort of drunk right now I would put more effort into this and believe me it would be HILARIOUS. Such is life.

Plus, what the fuck could be said about this?

“Holy shit Linda, I think I’m having a heart attack!”

“What did you say Brad? I’m scrapbooking.”

“I said I’m having a fucking heart attack! You need to get me to the hospital!”

“Oh jeez, don’t panic, I saw a really cute commercial the other day for a hospital. The doctors looked so handsome and the girl doctors were Asian. What the heck was it called?”

“Just call 911 Linda!”

“Hold your horses mister, I think you would really like this place, it had a real cute entrance with a cute fountain and the doctors were walking in slow motion. It made them look very hip.”

“I think I just pissed my pants. LINDA!”

“Maybe that dang commercial is on the DVR, I think I saw it during Ellen. Oh, that reminds me, I saved it for you because that sports fella you like was on.”

“Heart…attack…FUCK…THE…DVR!”

“That’s some way to talk! Fine let me check Yelp. Ooooooh, this one gets 4.5 stars! Dave_matthews_1_fan says it has the best vending machines! Brad, does that sound good?”

“Heart…ex…..ex………..exploding.”

“Shoot, sandwich_lover gives it 1 star and says ‘don’t waste your time, I’ve been to better hospitals.‘ Brad what do you think? I wish I could remember what hospital that commercial was for. It was black and white. Brad? BRAD? IT WAS BLACK AND WHITE.”

“dying.”

“OK, keep your pants on. Let me just update my Facebook status real quick and we can be on our way to that vending machine hospital… ‘Leftover pizza, sweat pants, Legos EVERYWHERE and late night trip to the hospital… just another crazy day for the Smithporks!’”

“Take me lord, I am ready.”

“Found it Brad! Honey? Crawl into the living room, I wanna show you.”

Did you realize you have been wasting your time with toilet paper for over 100 years you big fucking moron? Finally some genius came to his senses and realized there is a much better way to clean our shitty buttholes!

It’s so simple… just keep your poo stick near the toilet. After you explode a load of crap into the bowl, simply take a wad of toilet paper and insert it into your poo stick, reach behind your back, locate your shit-covered bunghole, jam the stick up there and pull it back up behind you with extra care so as not to smear shit all over your back and hair. Almost done… next just carefully stand up and turn around without letting your poopie ass touch anything and eject the soiled paper into the bowl. Just a few more steps… sit back down, grab another handful of toilet paper and DELICATELY insert it into your poo stick because it will now be covered in feces. Reach back behind you without letting your shit-covered poo stick touch ANYTHING on the way down and jam it back up into that brown mess. Stand, eject and repeat as needed. Once your barking spider is finally clean you are going to want to flush the toilet and clean off any feces that you may have accidentally smeared on your back, legs, hands, hair, clothes, towels and/or walls. All you have to do next is wash your crap-encrusted poo stick in the bath tub and put it back near the toilet. Simply clean your bath tub with bleach and that’s it. SIMPLE! As promised, your dignity is intact.

It really is the modern solution. I mean using toilet paper these days is about as smart as still using AOL for your email!

The Comfort Wipe poo stick is for anyone who poops… uptight blonde MILFs, uncles with bad shoulders, old ladies with mysterious accents and even big guys. That’s right, I said big guys! There are many disadvantages to being a big guy but one of the countless advantages is that you have the opportunity to be so fat that you need to wipe your big wet butthole with a stick. Lucky!

You know Comfort Wipe is going to work, I mean look at that perfectly clean white butthole right in their logo!