The West Virginia Surf Report!

I’m starting to get paranoid. I find myself routinely surveying the people around me, and looking for someone (anyone!) who might be a little older than I am. And I often come up empty. I’m an old man at this point, and don’t even like to tell people my age. This is a relatively new development, maybe the last three or four years. I never volunteer my age, ’cause the number is frightening to everyone within earshot. Sure, I know all the cliches:

• You’re only as old as you feel
• Age is just a number
• You’re not getting older, you’re getting better
• 60 is the new 40 (or whatever the fuck)

And others that I’m probably too old to remember. Those things can be packed deep. Also: Who cares what people think? That one can be packed, too. It’s not so much what people think, it’s how I’m going to feel about the situation when they recoil in horror. I’m not concerned about them so much, I just don’t need my fears confirmed. Ya know? Here’s another one:

• Well, it’s better than the alternative

That’s certainly true. But it’s true in any situation. “Man, it’s hot in here!” “At least you’re not dead.” “My new shoes keep squeaking.” “It’s better than being in a grave.” “This burger is overcooked.” “I knew somebody who roasted alive in a warehouse fire, and I bet he’d love to be here to eat that overcooked burger.” So… that’s no comfort to me. It can also be packed.

Recently I find myself getting defensive about my age too. Like at the self-checkout stand at the grocery store… It bugs me greatly when one of those zit-spangled little shits comes over and asks if I need assistance. Why me? Why are you asking me in particular? Believe it or not, despite my gray hair, I know how to operate this complex apparatus. I can even successfully navigate the purchase of a Roma tomato — utilizing the convoluted produce lookup tool — if necessary. I’m able to figure it out. So quit hassling me, Adolph Zitler.

The same thing happened at a restaurant over the weekend. It was one of those deals where you have to scan a barcode to bring up the menu, and the over-caffeinated anorexic waitress wanted to hold our hands through the process. I blasted her with my eyes and she scampered away to probably drown her sorrows in a comically-elongated can of Rockstar or whatever. I go on and on about it in the latest podcast, if you’re interested.

Anyway, I’m becoming one of those grouchy old bastards who sees conspiracies around every corner, and in every shadow.

Ready for another cliche?

• I don’t feel old, I feel like I always have.

I guess that’s good, right? But the tiny (but loud) cynic who lives inside my head whispers that it’s all a false sense of comfort. Oh, you’re old, he whisper-shouts, make no mistake about it. I know… And I realize there are lots o’ people actually older than I am who are probably sneering at my concerns. And I do find small comfort in the fact that my parents are 21 years older than I am, and have apparently been having the time of their lives for the past 10 years or so. That makes me feel a little better.

How are you doing with the aging process? Have you reached my level of insanity yet? Bring us up to date on it, won’t you?

And I’ll see you guys again real soon.

Have a great day!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

When I came home from work on Thursday night I walked through the door and bellowed (to nobody), “What in the long sleeved shit?! Why is it so cold in here??” I walked straight to the thermostat and gave it a little extra juice. Then I went to bed an hour or so later, without thinking any more about it. But when I got up the next morning Toney told me the furnace wasn’t working at all. Ugh! What if it’s dead? Visions of a $3000 replacement bill started dancing in my head.

But it’s even worse than that. We can’t even get anybody to come out and look at it. Toney called our normal place and they said “maybe Monday or Tuesday.” Then on Monday it became “maybe Wednesday.” It’s freaking cold in here! So, we called other places and it was an even longer wait. One guy said the end of next week “if all goes well.” That’s no good.

So, we went through the weekend with no heat. Toney and I got into a mini-argument about buying a space heater, but it was eventually purchased. It helps in the living room, but the bedrooms are like sleeping out in the yard. It’s crazy. We’re stacking blankets like Little House on the Prairie. And, fueled by the low temps predicted for the next couple of nights, I’m now worried about our pipes freezing.

And nobody will even come out to take a look at what might be causing the problem. We’re in a frosty-ass holding pattern. It’s bullshit. I feel like checking into the Hilton in Scranton and just letting the chips fall where they may.

What’s the longest you’ve gone without heat or electricity or some other vital utility? I’m sure some of you who live in hurricane or earthquake areas have some REAL horror stories to tell. This is only Day Four for us, but it’s taking its toll. It feels like a tomb in here. And Toney has all the blinds down, believing it will help, which only makes it sadder and more demoralizing. The gloom is taking me down!

What do you have on this subject? Tell us about it in the comments, won’t you?

And I’ll be back soon. Hopefully in a warm and toasty state.

Have a great day, my friends.

UPDATE: We now have heat again. A person came out today and was here for more than seven hours. He said we had “stacked” problems, meaning more than one. It wasn’t a cheap fix, but I don’t have any suspicions he was scamming us in any way. Something called an aquastat was the main culprit. Who the hell knows? I’d never heard that word before in my life. All I know is… it’s warm and toasty in here again. Pass the beer nuts.

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

Hey everyone, this is K. Thomas Zipperer, or Producer Zipp, as Jeff so lovingly calls me, and the big dog himself has given me a shot at the Surf Report, so I’m gonna try a little harder than I normally do at stuff to impress you.

Anywho, it’s Halloween, one of the best, if not the best holidays of the year. And even though Halloween 2020 was supposed to be as dope as something called ‘Halloween 2020’ could be, with it taking place on the one Saturday of the year that the bars will be open an extra hour. So yeah, if this God damn virus wasn’t happening, we could have had a real bad ass spooky season.

But instead, we’re stuck ‘trunk r treating’, or even worse, doing non spooky things with our loved ones at home. The horror.

And to top this all off, Halloween is taking place on not only a full moon, but a BLUE moon! Which, by the way, is two full moons in the same month and has nothing to do with the color of the moon. And I mean, come on, when have you ever looked up at the sky and seen a literal blue fucking moon? You don’t think you’d have noticed that by now? I digress.

So, to honor what little shred of spooky holiday spirit we’re gonna have this year, and in observation of the full moon Halloween that could have been, I wrote a full podcast episode about….the Moon! Some of you might be thinking to yourself,”That sounds stupid. It’s just a big dumb rock in the sky. How scary could it be??”

Well, yeah, I guess if you phrase it like that, it does sound kinda stupid. But too bad, cause I already wrote and released it here. If you’re wondering, we cover myths and legends associated with the moon, modern horrors and misconceptions associated with moonlight, and the Apollo space program. Plus, there’s an awesome horror sketch that takes place at the beginning of the episode that gives you a chance to hear me die, which I imagine is the fantasy of some of ya’ll when I guest host for Jeff on the podcast.

While researching, I came across a ton of shit, as it seems like every culture, society, or religion has some tale or another involving the Moon. I think this plethora of content can be easily explained by the fact that everyone can see the Goddamn Moon. 

It’s not subtle.

Oh shit, ya’ll can see me?

But, the most genuinely chilling and disturbing thing I came across didn’t involve aliens, or mythical beasts, or any of that other sci-fi nonsense.  No, it involves a villain who’s infamy will reign through the halls of time.

Richard ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon.

Even though Nixon himself wasn’t personally on the Eagle when it landed (which is actually the plot for a sci-fi/historical fiction novel I’m working on), as the commander-in-chief it was his responsibility to lead the United States along on the journey to the Moon. This entailed some of the basics like announcing that, indeed, the eagle had landed.

However, like with pretty much anything leadership involved, you’re gonna have to eat some shit every so often.

And in this case, the shit Nixon almost ate was a heaping spoonful of dead ass astronauts if anything happened to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. As is customary for large, ambitious endeavors, those responsible prepared two speeches. One for if they’re successful, and one for if they fail.

Two famous presidential examples include General Dwight D Eisenhower on D-Day and Harry S Truman if the A-bomb turned out to be a really expensive dud.

It was gonna be fuckin’ sick, I swear.

Nixon was no exception. Below is the content of the speech that was to be given in case the Eagle didn’t land. Or landed too hard. Or if carnivorous moon worms turned out to be a real thing.

As you can see, the speech does a great job beautifully eulogizing two very brave men on the cutting edge of human exploration. It would have been a heavy moment, no doubt, but it would have been handled in a way that balanced the appreciation of their sacrifice with the poetry and symbolism inherent with such a monumental event. Thankfully, Nixon’s original ending line was “sock it to me”, but he was convinced to drop it at the request of the producers of ‘Laugh-In’.

I won’t lie, I find the speech chilling to read, mostly because it makes me realize how close we came to confronting the evitable daunting reality of losing a human body in space. I’ll touch more on that in a bit, but first I have to point out how fucking creepy the phrase “widow-to-be” is. And it was 1969, so they probably would have called Mrs. Armstrong and Mrs. Aldrin that to their face.

But what this means is NASA prepared for the possibility of Buzz and Neil just being stuck there, slowly running out of oxygen while Michael Collins orbited above, grateful he picked the short straw and stayed in the command module.

For those wondering, with the exception of three cosmonauts during the Space Race days, no humans have actually died in space. They all die either coming up, or going back down. Which is totally understandable, as it seems fairly dangerous.

Now, the concept of a human body being lost to space disturbs me because it’s just so permanent. You’re just gonna float and float and float forever until you hit a star or a moon worm eats you. And if you really want to make your head hurt, just imagine the actual possibility that the first human to accidentally be tossed into space could float for millions of years and be found by a future and/or alien civilization. If I’m starting to sound like your brother’s high friend, yes, I am high while writing this.

But the Moon as a possible permanent resting place offers a unique issue for the rest of us humans who survive here on Earth. We all have to collectively be sad every time we look up at the night sky. I also imagine full moons would be a bummer for the ‘widows-to-be’ for quite a while.

“Everytime I look at the Moon, all I see is him”

“Who? Oh right, your dead astronaut husband”

As you can see at the end of Nixon’s unused speech, the intention was to treat this nightmare Twilight Zone premise as a burial at sea, except the ones being ‘buried’ weren’t dead, but for all intents and purposes were to be considered deceased once radio transmissions cut off. Just imagine the horror of that situation. Stuck in a little Jiffy Pop popping pan, 240,000 miles away from the nearest human or unfiltered cigarette! I wonder what Neil and Buzz would have done in the meantime. Played cards? Turned off their oxygen early, just to get it over with? My vote would have gone to drinking all the tang and opening the hatch. Let the laws of physics have a go at my dead carcass and give those moon worms something to talk about when they find my fat, bloated corpse covered in moon dust.

But, alas, those brave men, who some would say had the ‘right’ ‘stuff’, didn’t perish. They landed successfully, Moon walked, and floated their happy asses back to Earth to take a well deserved splash in the ocean. They followed this up with a short, fun filled stay in quarantine, which I’m sure was exactly what they wanted to do after spending a week cooped up together in space.

They only quarantined due to Nixon’s irrational fear of moon worm eggs 

And finally, once the entire ordeal was finally over, the trio returned to their possible ‘widows-to-be’ and had what I assume was the best sex of their lives. Except Michael Collins. He had to hover outside Buzz’s and Neil’s rooms while they made love. Bummer.

Thomas Zipperer is a writer, podcaster, editor, and voice performer. He hosts the weekly comedy show No Redeeming Qualities, and produces the political podcast 1 Big Toilet. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

While I was in West Virginia last weekend my parents took me out for a grand tour of the area. I mean, I grew up there and know it like the back o’ my hand, but things change a little here and a little there. And we always go out in the car and just drive around. This would make some people insane, I realize, but I don’t mind it. It’s pleasant time spent with my folks. In any case, when we were in Dunbar we went past a house where my friend Rocky and I introduced alcohol into some kind of ludicrous no-alcohol party. This was in high school, a million years ago, but that house will always remind me of that night of high-craziness.

I’ve told the story many times, so I’ll just summarize it now. Rocky dragged me to this thing because he was hot for some girl who was going to be there. When we walked in people were playing backgammon and drinking soda and listening to a novelty song based on the Who Shot J.R.? craze. I told you it was a long time ago… But we walked into this nerd jubilee and I think I audibly blurted, “What the fuck?!” There were fedoras and a sheet cake… It was hard for my brain to process what was happening before me. What is this, My Three Sons?

But Rocky set off on his mission to woo some young lass, and I just wandered around absorbing the “Why is he here?!” looks that were being hurled my way. And within seconds, Rocky was back and agitated. Apparently his mission had failed, in an accelerated fashion. “Let’s go get some beer,” he said. You told me this is a no-alcohol party, I reminded him. Screw that, he replied.

Fast forward an hour or two and the place was rocking. People were filing in at a steady clip, more and more alcohol appeared, the Who Shot J.R.? record was ripped from the turntable and flung behind a chair, replaced by Molly Hatchet. And Rocky went wild. I’ll bullet-point his most memorable antics:

• He repeatedly locked himself in bathrooms, refusing to come out. I was enlisted to convince him to open the door. Why was he doing this? Who the hell knows?
• Without provocation he wound up like freaking Catfish Hunter and hurled a slice of pizza against a kitchen wall. The “Italian fastball” as it came to be known. It stuck there for a second or two, then slid down in a big greasy streak.
• He rifled through the host’s underwear and bra drawer.
• He took a majestic arcing piss off the second-floor deck, in the direction of the now-displaced nerds huddled in the backyard.

In addition, there was a wig (belonging to the host’s mother?) that ended up in a toilet and pissed upon (and through) by dozens of people, and my friend Bill hid many empty beer cans all over the house — down inside boots, behind the soup cans in the pantry, inside toilet tanks, etc. I have no doubt they were finding them 10 years later, reminders of the no-alcohol party.

The parents made some phone calls the next day, and I got into some low-grade trouble because of that night. But I didn’t really do anything, except help bring in that first batch of beer. Rocky, on the other hand, was grounded for a long, long time. Heh. The man was unleashed!

What’s the craziest things you’ve witnessed at a party? Tell us about it, won’t you? I’ll leave the comments open for a while, but please no politics, OK? Just tell us about the ridiculousness you’ve seen at parties. We don’t need any of that other stuff.

I was also at a so-called “attic party” in Greensboro many years ago and a big fight broke out, like something off TV. It was wild! During the process a glass coffee table was shattered into about 10,000 pieces, and I high-tailed it out of there. Craziness. People were throwing haymakers.

What do you have on this subject? Please bring us up to date on it.

And I’ll see you guys again soon!

Support us with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

As mentioned, Producer Zipp sat in for me on the podcast while I was out o’ town recently. You can hear it here. In the episode, he tells a story about a crafty raccoon that kept attacking his flock of ducks and chickens. He mentioned that once the beast was finally dispatched, he hung its tail from the coop as a reminder to the raccoon community at large that they’d best tread lightly. Yesterday he sent me a photo of it, and I thought I’d share. That should do the trick! Raccoons, by the way, look cute and cuddly, but don’t let ’em fool you. They’ll mess you up.

I returned to work yesterday for the first time since September 29. I had 2755 emails. I was there for more than eleven hours, with no lunch, and got it down to something in the high 600s. I also had other issues that I’m not going to write about. But I came to the following conclusion: I’m either never going on vacation again, or never returning from the next one. Those are the only prudent courses of action, as far as I can tell. Today is going to be another ball-masher. Looking forward to it!

In the new episode of the podcast I did a rundown of the food we had while on vacation. ‘Cause food is one of the top three great things about vacation. You can hear it right here. And I mentioned that we also partook (I’m surprised that’s actually a word) of the local craft beers (another of the top three). Either by drinking them there, or buying stuff and muling it back home. Oh, we brought a lot of stuff back with us. And here’s a rundown for you fellow craft beer snobs out there. I kept impeccable notes!

Hoppyum IPA
Overly Friendly IPA
Sweetwater IPA
Pernicious IPA
Sweetwater Brewing variety pack
New South IPA
Hopsequences IPA
Huger Street IPA
Highland Brewing variety pack
Fuller’s London Pride (a British favorite I rarely see)
Bound By Time IPA
Grand Strand IPA
IPA variety pack (from four different breweries)

In the unlikely event that you’d like to know the components of those variety packs, let me know. I can provide the information. It’s all in my handy-dandy travel notebook. And, as you can see, we’re all about the hops. We only had one pint of a couple of those (like New South IPA), bought a six-pack of a couple and drank them while we were there (Overly Friendly, a great name for a beer brewed in the South), and others we bought a full case and brought it back (Wicked Weed’s kick-ass Pernicious IPA). Did we get carried away? Perhaps. But most of this stuff is not available to us in the Upper Pierogi Belt. Now we’re stocked.

Speaking of travel, I’m going to West Virginia on Saturday, to visit my parents. They’re leaving for Florida on November 1, so the window of opportunity is quickly closing. I’m driving on Saturday and Tuesday, and will be there Sunday and Monday. It’s another long-ass ride (7 hours, 50 minutes according to Google). So, there you go. By the end of the week I’ll be completely caught up at work and everything will go down the ol’ poop-catcher again. Oh well. I need to see my folks before they disembark for the winter. I’m going by myself this time, and hopefully the Van Halen Channel will still be up and running on SiriusXM. If so, I’ll be logging many hours on that thing. I might also listen to Mark Everett’s (E of the Eels) memoir, Things The Grandchildren Should Know. I read it when it first came out, but am feeling the urge to revisit it. Maybe via audio book this time? In any case, please contribute to Phantom Ass Syndrome research whenever possible. Together we can defeat it.

Are any of you in Canada? If so, I want to remind you that I’m still up and running with Amazon Canada. The USA kicked me out, for reasons unknown, but Canada (kinder, gentler folks) is still working. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not urging you to do anything out of the ordinary, just keeping you informed. It’s all about the information. Information is king.

And speaking of Amazon, I bought season 15 of Top Gear a couple of days ago, so I can watch a couple of episodes with my dad. I know he’ll love it. For years I’ve been encouraging him to seek out the show, and he just says, “Yeah, yeah…” But I’m going to sit down with him and watch an episode or two while I’m there. I picked season 15 because it contains the episode about the Reliant Robin, which is flat-out hilarious. He’s gonna love it! I think.

And I’m going to stop right here. I need to fill the void (eat lunch) and go back to work.

Have a great day, my friends. Comments will be open for three days.

See ya soon!

Support us with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). Thank you, guys!