Says the five-year-old after watching Dad struggle along: “Jogging is just fake running.”

I extended my finger and she sprayed a little curl of foam on the pad, and indeed the foam popped and fizzed. A-ha, I thought, someone has finally combined the chemistry of Pop Rocks with the technology of aerosol cheese. I shook my head in the old I’ll-be-danged manner, and popped the finger in my mouth.

Later, when I got done rinsing and spitting and rinsing and spitting and pawing at my mouth like a dog with a lip-full of quills, and when the hysterical teenaged giggling subsided, I had a look at the can:

“WILD APPLE DAFFODIL SHIMMER FIZZ BODY MOUSSE”

Setting aside for a moment the idea that a man who would eat WILD APPLE DAFFODIL SHIMMER FIZZ BODY MOUSSE is in charge of the keeping and raising of daughters, let us consider that this same man, who considers himself moderately well-read and traveled was utterly ignorant of the existence of SHIMMER FIZZ BODY MOUSSE of any formulation, and is officially prepared to tender his letter of resignation as soon as he can figure out where to mail it. Why do I get the feeling that the road ahead is nothing but high-speed hairpins overlooking an endless canyon?

P.S. In her defense, please note that at no time did my niece suggest I actually eat the stuff.

P.P.S. On the back of the can, where it says “NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS”? No longer true.

Also got to thank my 7th grade English teacher…

In this episode’s monologue – delivered from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin’ – Mike talks about how he got hooked, unhooked, hooked, unhooked, and well…he talks about his coffee problem.

You can join the Tent Show Radio Facebook page here.

REMINDER: Most of this year’s previous Tent Show Radio episodes available for streaming anytime – just click here.

SET LIST:

Blue Canvas Orchestra: Ballyhoo
Mountain Heart: Intro Instrumental, That Just Happened, Whipping Post, Devils Courthouse,  Soldier’s Prayer
Michael Perry: Back Home on the Farm
Mountain Heart: One More For The Road, Unknown, Outro Instrumental
Blue Canvas Orchestra: Hobo Blues

To listen click here.

In this episode’s monologue – delivered from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin’ – Mike talks about how he got hooked, unhooked, hooked, unhooked, and well…he talks about his coffee problem.

You can join the Tent Show Radio Facebook page here.

REMINDER: Most of this year’s previous Tent Show Radio episodes available for streaming anytime – just click here.

SET LIST:

Blue Canvas Orchestra: Ballyhoo
Mountain Heart: Intro Instrumental, That Just Happened, Whipping Post, Devils Courthouse,  Soldier’s Prayer
Michael Perry: Back Home on the Farm
Mountain Heart: One More For The Road, Unknown, Outro Instrumental
Blue Canvas Orchestra: Hobo Blues

I was cleaning carp out behind the house one afternoon when the rawboned neighbor guy walked over. He had been fiddling on a junk car. “Nice ones,” he said, looking down at the fish. And they were, a bodacious passel of Ictiobus bubalus, as my carp-shooting buddy Mills and I like to call them when we’re all dressed up in camo on our secret log, sweating in the sun and smelling of fish slime and Off!. A little Latin to offset the caveman behavior and stink. Mills got me into bow fishing, and now it’s a problem. I sneak off to shoot carp the way some guys sneak off to shoot pool. Mills smokes them up with apple and hickory in his old concrete smoker, but first I have to clean them. The neighbor stood there silent while I sawed off heads and peeled out guts. Every now and then he took a drag on his Marlboro and a pull on his Pabst. Finally, he spoke.

“So. Yer a writer.”

“Well, yeah, I mean…”

“You do poetry?”

“Well, I’m not much of a…”

“I do some poetry.”

“I, uh…”

“Good shit.”

He walked back to his car. We never spoke again.