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We bumped into a Homer’s kid at the pharmacy a few weeks ago. Almost everyone was younger than me while I worked at Homer’s, co-workers and customers alike. I watched preteens turn into college students and adolescents morph into moms and dads. During that time Jenny & I became parent figures to many of those “Homer’s kids.” When we saw Daniel at first I wasn’t sure if it was him because of our masks, but the way we kept looking at each other over the pharmacy aisle, I finally said “Daniel?” It was him. Daniel used to come to Homer’s all the time with his dad, Charlie. Daniel was at the pharmacy to buy skin moisturizer for his new tattoo. I asked if there was a story behind it and found out that his family has always liked bears. They even put “bear” after each others’ names. It was good seeing Daniel Bear.

“Indy, why does the floor move?” That’s the question Sallah asked Indiana Jones before they realized the floor was covered with snakes. Thankfully my breakfast booth isn’t teeming with snakes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it is covered with faces in formica. A few days ago this mutant penguin gave me the ‘side eye.’ He appears to be in a bad mood and in need of dental work. I’ll call him Bucky. 

Hoovie got his t-shirts in the mail! He was so excited he put them both on and started playing video games! I’m glad Rachell had a camera nearby when he went into action. It’s sort of like Marlin Perkins filming a cheetah when it chases down its prey! Here you see the predator lulling his victims into a false sense of security by disguising himself as one of them (a space invader) before blasting the entire horde into oblivion. …and here is the mighty hunter displaying his other outer t-shirt as he gets ready to face another day. Rock on Sir Hoovie! 

It was like a carnival on a beach where aliens landed… I could hear a wheezy accordion… I could taste the salty air… I could even see a green haze on the horizon that looked like it was from another world! That’s what each kernel of this glazed coconut popcorn tasted like. There is a wide array of flavors on the wall at Pop Culture where we bought two little bags of popcorn, and I intend on going back to try each one. This popcorn isn’t something you can live on, but it’s something you can live for!

Maybe it’s a phase I’m going through, maybe it’s a revelation: I love V-neck tees. I especially love ones with weirdly singular retro designs like this souvenir shirt from an Asian restaurant that may or may not exist. No eating establishment sells t-shirts like this anymore! That’s why I had to have one! This is only one of 4 t-shirts that I bought recently. Another one has the AM/FM dial that I wrote about last week, and then two more were mailed to Hoovie’s house yesterday. I’m waiting to hear his response. Operators are standing by. As soon as I know, you will too.

There’s an online station that is an easy “go to” when I want to hear music that is soothing yet weird, funky yet nerdy, retro yet futuristic… I’m talking about Inhailer Radio. I haven’t heard a station like this since WOXY. Oddly enough I discovered it when a former WOXY DJ made a post on social media about it. Inhailer Radio makes me want to inhale… exhale… and then inhale again. You will be hard pressed to find another radio station that plays bands like:
Moonspeak
This Is The Kit
Illuminati hotties
The Replacements
Red Rum Club
Ghost of Vroom
I only wish I could play it in my truck.

The tuner on my new V-Neck t-shirt can’t pull in any stations, but that familiar sight can take me back to another time. I can still hear that DJ in Oklahoma who sounded like Wolfman Jack but he called himself The Boogie Man. His show started out with a chorus of women chanting “Boogie Man, Boogie Man, oooh! aahhh!”  When our TV stopped working, my little sister and I discovered  CBS Radio Mystery Theater and listened to stories like The White Wolf. In that story a stepmother turned into a wolf and killed all of her husband’s children except for one, and that poor kid was telling the story as the wolf was panting outside his window. Yep, there’s a lot of memories in those frequencies and megahertz.

How weird is it to keep my distance from those I love during Thanksgiving? It’s weird enough to make me wish I could dress like a pilgrim and stand on your front porch! Jenny asked me if we could go caroling (just the two of us) when it get’s closer to Christmas. We would just go around the neighborhood to feel connected to friends we haven’t seen in a long time. It’s actually not a bad idea if the weather doesn’t prevent us. In the meantime here’s a song by Susan Werner from her Songs of Social Distance album. Warning: it might make you cry. It made me cry.

The first time I heard Susan Werner on Folk Alley, an online radio station out of Kent State Ohio, I knew I wanted to hear more. Then I found out she has a YouTube channel where she’s been doing a series every Sunday night where viewers can see her live and post comments and make song requests. Maybe I’ll see you there next Sunday night at 6pm! In the meantime I hope this song of hers cheers you up.

Jenny and I filled up her Kia Soul for 95 cents last Sunday. Gas hasn’t been that cheap since Model T’s shared the streets with horse drawn carriages and Henry Ford was a household name! I took a picture of the gas pump to prove it really happened…If you’re wondering how we went back in time to pay eleven cents a gallon, it was by way of our Chopper Shopper card from Price Chopper. We saved up enough points from our grocery purchases to knock $1.54 off the $1.65 price. We actually pumped 8 gallons into that gas tank for a whopping total of 95 cents. I wanted to keep driving, but I was afraid we might go deeper into a time portal. Being so far west into the Kansas Territory we might have been caught between the U.S. Cavalry and a warring tribe of Native Americans.