But first, look at this bullshit. I took this photo from our front porch about fifteen minutes ago. And it had been like spring… We were talking about our lawn mowing options, just yesterday! That’s not a light dusting, it’s a real snow. Sure, it’ll be gone quickly. But it’s a demoralizing turn of events, my friends. It’s not good when you start your day shouting, “Are you fucking serious?!” It’s like we’re living inside a black & white photograph again. A couple of days ago it was full Technicolor. I’m becoming angry.

Also, you know who I hear all the time, for reasons unknown? The Spin Doctors. It feels like they’re out there… and everywhere. Every grocery store I walk into, every convenience store I visit, while I’m listening to baseball games on the radio… The Spin Doctors have insinuated themselves into American culture as few bands have. It’s bizarre to me. But they’re all over the place, thirty years later! Why is that? Why them? …It’s probably not even worth contemplating. But I wanted to bring it up. Are you hearing them everywhere too? WTF??

And now… what food or drink have you completely written off because of some bad experience in the past? The only one I can come up with is Long Island Iced Tea. I’ve told that story before, and it doesn’t need to be told in great detail again. It was a million years ago, during the early 1980s, and I was with Rocky. We were drinking in an unknown bar, in a town where we never drank, ingesting a great number of Long Island Iced Teas: a drink we never ordered. And it led to a series of events, which I’ll summarize:

• Being chased off the property of an elementary school by an angry woman wielding a broom.
• Power-vomiting at a carnival.
• Reportedly uttering the famous phrase, “Help me find my glasses Rocky, so I can kick your ass.”
• Being dropped like a sack o’ taters on the floor of Billy’s den.
• Waking up with cats sleeping on me.
• My girlfriend coming to pick my drunken ass up and being absolutely disgusted.
• My mother being involved somehow.

It was a terrible night. One of the all-time worst. In fact, I quit drinking for two years after that. Yeah, there are a couple of other bullet-points I’m leaving out… But even though it’s been more than 35 years, my stomach still churns whenever I catch a whiff of Long Island Iced Tea. It has a distinctive smell that I remember, and it does a number on me, even now. I would NEVER be able to drink one. Holy hell.

But that’s all I can come up with. Thankfully, I’ve never had food poisoning. I’m not sure how that’s possible. Maybe because I don’t eat crustaceans ‘n’ shit? Toney has had it several times and swears off the food for a while. Then she goes back. She got very sick in California, after eating shrimp at a fancy-ass restaurant. I mean, she was down and out for days on end. But she’ll still eat those bugs o’ the sea. I don’t get it, but whatever.

Do you have anything on this? If so, please tell us about it in the comments.

And I need to call it a day here.

I just uploaded a new episode of the podcast, for patrons. And here’s the summary:

In this one I tell you about a fresh car crash I witnessed on my way to work and how I reacted, the reason I’m dragging ass, my tasty but unusual turkey-tubes dinner, the world’s most depressing places of business, and a hard-to-explain complaint about the way people drive through parking lots these days. Thanks for the support, and thanks for listening!

I hope you guys have a great weekend! Talk about hard-earned… But it’s nearly here.

I’ll see you again on Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. We’ll see how it goes.

Have fun!

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Yeah, yeah. I know some misguided people call it pop, but I call it the correct thing: soda. I took a look at this map and it just confused me, so I clicked out of it. I can’t tell if I’m in the pop belt or the soda band, or where exactly I fall geographically. All I know is… I don’t like pop. My dad says that for some reason. It has a distinctly Ohio feel to me. And I can’t have that. Actually, when I was a young hillbilly child, it was just coke. All sodas were called coke, with a lower-case c. So it would lead to scenarios like this:

Person one: What kind of coke do you want?
Person two: Sprite, thanks.

But that shit doesn’t fly everywhere, so I’ve adjusted to soda. And I’m comfortable with that. I’m just going to continue with soda.

I try not to drink it much, because it’s “poison” according to my jaunty far-too-casual doctor, but when I do have a soda I tend to go with one of these three:

Dr. Pepper — I remember the first time I ever tasted this stuff. I was a very young kid, in the break room at my mom’s job. They had an open-top cooler full of sodas in there, and she told me I could have one. I chose a Dr. Pepper and it tasted like some sort of medicine. Blecch. But I’ve grown to love it, and it’s number one on my list o’ favorites.

Mountain Dew — Adam Carolla calls it “nectar of the ‘tards” which I don’t appreciate. I like it because it tastes good, quenches your thirst (unlike many sodas), and packs a powerful caffeine punch. I joke at my job that every bottle should have a phrase printed on it: The Official Drink of Night Shift. It’s helped get me to 1:30 am many times.

Root beer — If I’m in the mood for a Dr. Pepper and they don’t have it… I’ll go with a root beer. I like a good root beer. In fact, I started drinking fancy-pants craft root beers for a while. There was one made by the Appalachian Brewing Company that was nothing short of kick-ass. A lot of the high-end stuff taste like black licorice, or wintergreen, though. I prefer the classic taste. Ya know? I don’t need pourable licorice, thank you very much. It’s like Jagermeister without the alcohol.

And when it comes to cola, there’s only one choice: Coke. With an upper-case C. My answer to the “Is Pepsi OK?” question will always be, “Oh God, no. I’d rather drink raw sewage.” You can take your Pepsi and ram it deep and on a slant. I wouldn’t mind tasting an RC again, though. When I was a kid RC was a major player in our area. It felt like they were on the same level as Coke and Pepsi. And they had all their subsidiary sodas, too. Like Diet Rite and Upper 10 and Mr. Pibb. Heh. All that stuff seems to have fallen out of favor. I’m sure it’s still available, but it’s considered off-brand at this point. But I’d like to taste an RC again, just for curiosity’s sake. Coke, however, will always be the cola of choice.

I have a strong anti-Pepsi attitude, but wonder if I’d be able to tell the difference? Needless to say, I believe I could. Maybe I’ll go over to Sheetz and buy a bottle of Coke, Pepsi, and RC and do a blind taste test? That would be fun. Stay tuned for that. I’m going to do it. Maybe over the weekend.

Also, just like with Dr. Pepper, I can actually remember the first time I had a Sprite. It was at a motel in Florida somewhere, and I was a little kid. There was a vending machine there, and I rolled the dice on some mysterious elixir known as Sprite. It tasted fantastic! A huge upgrade from the more familiar 7 Up. I rarely drink it these days, but when I do… I’m transported to Florida, circa 1970 or whatever. So, Dr. Pepper and Sprite left the biggest impressions on me, for some reason.

And one more… Which rarely-seen soda will you ALWAYS go with when you see it? Fresca falls into that category for me. I never see the stuff, but I love it. It’s also in the Sprite/7 Up/Sierra Mist realm, but not exactly. It’s its own thing. I’m a big fan of the Fresca, but don’t encounter it very often. Also, it feels less-than-manly, for some reason. Am I wrong about that? It feels like a lady soda to me, for some reason. Heh. But I’ll drink it every time I see it. Good stuff.

What are your thoughts on this important topic? Are you a pop or soda person? Or is there some other phrase you use? Like, according to that article I linked to above, tonic. WTF?? I’ve never heard that in my life. A lot of older people used to call them soft drinks, but I’m not a fan of that, either. Do people still say that? I think they might, but I haven’t been paying attention. What are your top 3 sodas? Or top 10, I don’t care. And your cola of choice? Also, do you remember tasting a particular soda for the very first time? Where were you, etc.? Please tell us about it. You don’t have to answer all these questions, of course. Just pick and choose. There are no official work instructions on this stupidity.

There is, however, a new episode of the world-famous Jeff Kay Show available, wherever you get podcasts. Or right here. And this is the summary:

In this one, I deliver yet another stale and out of date weather report from the suburbs of Scranton, PA (!), wonder why in the hell gnats exist, tell you about my efforts to be accepted into the deli culture, the bored girl who draws eyeballs, eavesdropping on 45 year olds obviously on a first date in a Mexican restaurant, another terrible visit to Walmart, an important text message I received from The Beer Lady, and the final season of a fantastic comedy I’m watching on Amazon Prime. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening!

I was supposed to meet Steve for lunch today, but he canceled. So, I cranked this one out thinking I had major time constraints. Oh well.

Have a great week, my friends!

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Before it was finished, I mean. Of course, you’ve walked out of a movie. I mean… you’re not still there, right? But have you ever been so bored or disgusted by the proceedings you just said fukkit and extracted yourself?

I can’t really remember leaving a movie before it was over. There were certainly a few I should’ve thrown the towel in on. When I lived in Atlanta I saw quite a few art films, and some of them were interesting, a few were great, and a handful were just pure garbage. To me anyway. I always feel like it’s probably genius, and I’m too bumpkin and unsophisticated to understand it.

But I can remember one in particular that featured a long scene of a plump woman dressed as a little girl, up a tree and dropping flower petals to the ground. For no known reason… and for a very long time. I was just sitting there blinking in confusion and aggravation. It was in the same building the Sex Pistols played their first U.S. show, and I wondered what Johnny Rotten would think of this pretentious dogshit. So, at least I had that to cling to: channeling Johnny’s obliteration of the spectacle. We didn’t walk out, though. We endured it to the end.

Twice I can remember going to a concert to see the opening act, and taking off before the headliner took the stage. The first was Joe Walsh opening for Stevie Nicks in Charleston. I watched Joe rock the house for 45 minutes or whatever, and hit the highway before Stevie’s sheep bleating could commence. She’s very mysterious, you know. She spins round and round with scarves.

And in Atlanta I watched Squeeze open for Sting, and hit the exit before Mr. Precious could enter the picture. I’m sure he did an impassioned version of “Message In A Bottle” accompanied by a lone zither, or somesuch. But I wasn’t there to witness it. I’d extracted myself.

But those two were by design. I’d planned to leave after the opener in both instances. However, I remember leaving a ZZ Top show in Charleston, ’cause the girl I was with hated it. This was before they’d become MTV cartoon characters, and it was a lot of extended guitar jams, etc. She wasn’t digging it, and we left. Oh well. Also, I kinda-sorta remember leaving a Moody Blues concert because it was just so bloody dull. Now they’re in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Go figure.

And that’s all I have. I can’t come up with anything else.

Steve and his wife went to see Brokeback Mountain years ago, down in Central PA, and he said some guy stood up about 30 minutes in and shouted, “What the fuck?! I’m not watching this shit!!” and stormed out. Ha! Wonder what he thought he was going to see?

If you have anything on this, please tell us about it. Use the comments section so thoughtfully provided by our WordPress overlords. And I’m going to call it a day here, my friends. Yesterday felt like Friday to me, and now I get to relive it: a bonus Friday for Jeff. Good stuff.

I served up a freshly baked podcast episode during yesterday’s Friday for patrons. Check it out here. And this is the summary:

In this one I talk about the beautiful day we’re experiencing and what that does to me, my regular encounters with the assumed employee of the month at a local beer store, some kind of strange otherworldly baseball game I heard on the radio which I’ll probably never forget, and my friend Tim’s fantastic analysis of the first season of Cannon. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for the support!

It felt scattered and all over the place during the recording, but I relistened to the finished episode and was shocked to realize it’s not horrible. Who could’ve predicted such a thing? But when you talk about Frank Cannon for an extended period, it can’t help but be kinda good. Right? Right.

I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend.

I’ll see you again on Monday.

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While we were in high school, during the summer months, a bunch of us bought some beer and went to a friend’s grandparents’ house to drink ’em. This was during the middle of the afternoon. The grandparents were out of town, so we thoughtfully turned their house into party central for a day. Rocky was there, and he got shitfaced and took off on his five-speed bike. Everybody else followed suit, in the shitfaced department, and one of my other friends upchucked in my living room floor a couple of hours later. He was thoroughly smashed, so somebody got the idea of driving him around town in the back of a pickup truck to try to sober him up. Ha! These were the kinds of sound decisions that were being made that day.

So, a bunch of us were in the back of this pickup, all of us drunk to some degree. I believe the driver was sober. He hadn’t been at the grandparents’ house, anyway. We drove all around Dunbar, trying to un-drunk some people before they had to go home and interact with their parents, etc. And as we approached Dunbar Elementary, we saw Rocky attempting to ride his bike down the street, but something was askew. When we got nearer we could see that he was all beat up. I mean… it was horrific. His face was a bloody mess and his clothes were a wreck. The chain was off his bike and he was trying to ride it anyway… He seemed to be out of it and was all messed up. It was a genuinely disturbing sight.

We got him home, but we didn’t know what had happened. He couldn’t even talk, not really. His mother took him to the emergency room, and he was admitted. He was there for days. We didn’t know if he’d had a bicycle wreck, or if somebody beat his ass, or what. Everybody thought we knew more than we did, and the cops were involved. We also had a bizarre meeting with Rocky’s mother who had us write down what we knew on pieces of paper and then dramatically burned them in an aluminum pie pan. It was wild! But we didn’t know anything. Nobody believed us, but it was true.

Anyway, the whole thing was upsetting and weird and went on for days. On the second or third day, a bunch of us decided to go see Rocky in the hospital. And somebody suggested we take him a gift of some kind. But what do you buy a guy like Rocky? A copy of Penthouse, of course! So, we went to a convenience store and it was decided that Steve would be the one to go in and buy the magazine. Needless to say, he was steamrolled into it. And if you knew Steve you’d know how uncomfortable this was for him. This was DEFINITELY outside his comfort zone.

There was a guy working in there known as Bimbo. He was older than us, probably 24 at the time. He was well-known around town and was a combination of nice and intimidating if you know what I mean. He never caused us any kind of problem, but it always felt like the potential was there. So, when Steve saw who was behind the counter he attempted to extract himself from the situation. I told him I’d go with him, but he had to do the talking. He reluctantly agreed. Oh, this was going to be great! All the porn was behind the counter, so he’d have to ask Bimbo for the Penthouse.

Steve was sweating high-caliber bullets as we walked up to the counter. Neither of us could look Bimbo in the eye, and he finally said, “So, what do you assholes want?” And Steve said, “Uh… could I get a copy of Playboy?” He attempted to soften it, by going with Playboy instead of Penthouse. But that was still acceptable. No problem. Bimbo didn’t react for half a second, and it felt like a long, long time. Then he said, real loud, “What are you going to do, Wilkerson? Go home and jack off?” I mean, he bellowed it, and it felt like every head in the store turned our way. The look on Steve’s face was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen.

When we got outside — with the magazine — I was buckled over in laughter for a solid minute. It was just so goddamn perfect. Steve wasn’t as amused but was also laughing a little. I think it was the first time any of us had so much as smiled in several days.

We never really found out what happened to Rocky. He still says he doesn’t remember but believes he was talking shit to some guys behind the elementary school, on the basketball courts. And they beat him up. Be he claims to not know for sure. He was an absolute mess, and my parents (and other parents) still believe we all knew more than we did. If you asked my Mom about it, right now, she’d say we covered something up. Also, Rocky didn’t even appreciate the Playboy very much. He demanded to know where he was supposed to hide it in a hospital room with his mother and sister and various nurses coming and going. Wow. After all that effort…

I don’t know if I’ve ever told that entire story before. I probably have, but can’t recall it.

Anyway, if you have any good convenience store tales to tell, please do so. Use the comments. Please share anything remarkable or crazy.

Another fast one before I call it a day here… I walked into a C-store in Greensboro, NC a million years ago and the girl behind the counter said, “Hey, are you a Jew?” What? I was instantly confused. But she was clearly talking to me, and I asked her what she was getting at. She said, “You just look like a Jew. You know, black curly hair and a big nose?” WTF?? She didn’t appear to know how offensive this line of questioning was, she just seemed to be real, real dumb. I told her I wasn’t a Jew, but would that be a problem if I was? And she shrugged, and said, “No, I was just wondering.” What in the everlasting hell?? And when I got home I stood in front of the mirror for five minutes looking at my nose. She’d given me yet another thing to feel self-conscious about. A big nose? That idea had never even occurred to me. I still think about it from time to time. Sheesh.

Have a great day, my friends!

I’ll be back on Thursday.

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Have you ever considered buying a dashcam? Like with other things, I scoffed and mocked them when they first came out, and now I’m intrigued. That’s the circle of life for me: 1) instantly dismiss 2) mock the people who did not also dismiss 3) begrudgingly become intrigued 4) buy one and tell everybody else they should buy one too. In any case, it’s still fairly early in the cycle, and it might not fully complete itself. It doesn’t always. But I’ve been looking at them on Amazon. I do a lot of driving and see some crazy shit out there. It might provide us with some Surf Report fun. I could start a YouTube channel where I post nothing but videos from my ludicrous commute.

A few months ago I was driving with the older hooligan, and a GIANT bear ran across the road in front of us. I mean, this thing was the Bea Arthur of bears. It passed right in front of my car, just haulin’ giant bear ass, and scrambled up the side of a steep hill and disappeared. It was one of those things where your brain can’t immediately process what it thinks it just saw. Ya know? I’d love to have that footage.

And rarely does a week go by when I don’t see some insane thing on Interstate 81. I think it might be fun. Possibly.

Have you considered buying one? Do you have one now? If so, did it ever pay dividends in some way? Either for insurance/police purposes or just for laughs? Tell us about it, won’t you? Also, home security cameras or nanny cams? Do you have any interesting tales to tell about those? I got nothing.

Yesterday I didn’t need a haircut, and today I do. While I slept the threshold was breached. Oh, I’m very plugged into the hair situation. It’s not easily explained, but an acceptable situation vs. an unacceptable one is exceedingly clear to me. I’m able to analyze the poofiness factor with the precision of a seismograph. So, on Saturday I’ll go over there and tell them to pour a cup of kerosene into the PoofExtractor, and get to work, goddammit.

Ten minutes ago Toney received a notification on her phone that American Airlines is having some sort of flash sale, and are offering round-trip tickets to Myrtle Beach for $215 each. And — get this! — they’re out of Scranton. Generally, we have to travel somewhere before we start traveling. But that price is for our local airport. Crazy! And the flight times are perfect… After Toney told me about it, she said, “What do you think?” And I answered, “You mean you haven’t bought them yet?!” So… they’ve now been purchased. Yes! That’ll change the entire trip, without the 11-hour ass-mashing ride back and forth. We’ll rent a car through the Costco app, and beach it up. Man, that’s great news. A weight lifted… I wasn’t looking forward to that drive.

Episode 68 of the world famous Jeff Kay Show is now live, for patrons. Here’s your link. And here’s your summary:

In this one I tell you about my lack o’ sleep problem, how I got greedy with the quiet time, a fantastic 1943 episode of Suspense I heard, our son’s trip to Florida and my advice to him, my upcoming day of doing interviews while under the influence of sleep deprivation, my perfect one-question job interview idea, and my hankerin’ for some home cooking before work. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for the support!

By the way, I’m toying with the idea of changing the name of the podcast. As usual, I didn’t think it through. I’m not 100% sure, but I am considering it. We’ll see how it goes. It would create logistical issues. And I’d need a new logo, as well as intro/extro music. I’ll keep you posted.

I have more but I need to go. I had a hell of a time uploading that podcast episode. It won’t work in Firefox, and I forgot and attempted it in Firefox. Then it errored out and I lost the summary, etc. Many of the bad words were uttered and shouted. So, I had to fire up Chrome and recreate it all. Then Patreon acted like somebody was attempting to hack my account… Maddening is the word that jumps to mind. But it’s up now. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to close out the category. Maybe next time?

Have a great weekend, boys and girls.

I’ll see you on Monday.

Now playing in the bunker
Support us by doing your shopping on Amazon! In Canada? Here’s your link. Thank you, guys!