M R DUCKS
M R NOT
M R 2
Generally speaking, I try to avoid writing about that which has already been written. That being said, I offer up the following statements for two specific reasons, even though the subject matter has already been discussed by others on the internet who are not quite capable of composing verbal brilliance at the intensity that you find here. Those reasons are as follows:
- What I have to say will provide an adequate backdrop to the actual subject matter of today’s dispatch.
- There’s nothing new under the sun. When something new does appear under the sun, what makes you think you’re going to find it here at TharpSter.Org?
It’s currently 3pm on Tuesday, September 17, 2013. Your favorite blogger on the whole worldwide web is currently sitting poolside at a hotel somewhere in the Texas hill country. Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, is the 20th anniversary of the day Wifey and I got married. We honeymooned at this same hotel and decided to return to the scene of the crime to mark the date. Whether it was by Divine Intervention or pure co-inky-dink, we were assigned the same room today that we were all those years ago. I choose to believe it was the first option that got us here.
Sure we’ll be doing the same stuff in that room we did 20 years ago. We just won’t be involving the pool and hot tub this time around.
But all of that has nothing to do with ducks now, does it?
Of course not.
Last year, around the holidays, A&E hit its viewing public with a full blast, nitrous infused assault of Duck Dynasty. For those of you in that cave on the dark side of the moon whose hand fashioned hi-def antennae don’t pick up A&E, allow me to provide some background.
Duck Dynasty is a reality show about a family in West Monroe, Louisiana which has made its millions on duck calls. The show is clean, and it’s funny. In fact, the dirtiest thing I’ve heard on this show since I’ve been watching it took place just last week when one of the Robertson employees inherited a stuffed jackalope standing up on its hind legs like that of a prairie dog. When they took the dearly departed varmint to the taxidermist to have it appraised, they learned that the statue was only worth $50. It would have gone for more if it had testicles. Si Robertson, in his role as the crazy ole’ coot, offered to go get some to add to the statue. He then offered up the title of his new business: “Si’s Gonad Emporium”.
That’s it people. Jackalope testicles are the dirtiest thing I’ve ever heard on Duck Dynasty. They’re definitely not the funniest thing though. I won’t go into details. Tune in and watch on Wednesday nights and you’ll see what I mean.
So I told you the story about the Jackalope testicles in order to soften the blow and lower the bar for the story I really want to tell. Granted, it doesn’t offer up the excitement that relieving a bull jackalope of his fellas in order to transform a stuffed female of the same mythical species into some sort of jackalope tranny. Even still, I think it’s worth discussing.
I have a couple of t-shirts featuring the key players of the Duck Dynasty. There’s one in particular I wear often because it’s black.
Dark solids, yo.
The front of the shirt features Phil the patriarch, his brother Si, and two of his boys, Willie and Jase. The back of the shirt lists off several of the goofy things Si has been known to say. Wearing the shirt out in public can sometimes be considered a crap shoot. If you’ve ever farted on an elevator (you know you have, don’t deny it), you’ll understand the reaction I receive whenever people see it.
Kinda.
Wearing this shirt out in public garners the same reaction as that of farting on a crowded elevator, as long as your digestive process and body metabolism produces a flatus reminiscent of the welcoming scent of freshly baked cinnamon buns.
That’s right people. I’m not getting looks of disgust or snarls of anger. Instead, people are stopping me from whatever it is I’m doing to discuss the show.
Last month, I stopped at a Tex-Mex grill stationed somewhere along the I-35 parking lot which connects San Antonio to various points north. I was on my way home from dropping Junior off at school where he’s studying the Mad Sciences. I was wearing the shirt. As I stood in line patiently waiting behind a couple of ladies of the octogenarian kind trying to determine whether they wanted their beans refried or burracho style, one turned around to see what was going on behind her.
I guess she had smelled cinnamon buns.
Upon seeing my shirt, her eyes lit up. “Oh, I just love that Duck Dynasty! Don’t you?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s hilarious.” When you’re hungry and in line behind someone who can’t quite make up their mind about their beans, your chips and queso aren’t going to get to you any faster if you respond with anything other than manners and congeniality.
She then poked my left moob, which was covered up by the bearded, grizzled face of Si Robertson. “I especially like that one. What’s his name again?”
I looked down at the arthritic finger on my moob. “Oh, that’s Uncle Si.” The conversation went on for a few more moments where the lady wondered out loud if the sink hole which had occurred in Louisiana just a few days before had taken place anywhere near the Robertsons. For what it’s worth, she also eventually took her finger off my moob, but not too soon to avoid the general weirdness of it all.
Man, I need to pee. There’s no restroom out here at the pool.
Flash forward a month to today. Upon reaching the small town in which Wifey and I will be catching lightening in a bottle again, we stopped at the local Dairy Queen. Texas law requires it. I wore the shirt again. After ordering my Blizzard and Wifey’s cone, I sat down at a booth to patiently wait for the chocolaty goodness laced with cookie dough to come my way and present itself to me upside down, the smell of warm cinnamon buns ensconced the immediate vicinity. This time, it was a member of a different demographic. A young, unshaven gentlemen approached me. Based on his clothing alone, I would guess he had been doing all of the fun dirty stuff that life in the cubicle doesn’t afford me. “Hey man, did you hear about one of those fellas being kicked out of a New York hotel because of his beard?”
I gave this gentlemen the benefit of the doubt and assumed he didn’t know that I know all. I also uttered a small prayer under my breath that he wasn’t going to come over and touch various parts of my torso in order to point out which of the Robertsons he was talking about. “Yeah, isn’t that wild?” I responded. “The people at the hotel just read the book by the cover on that one.”
Editor’s note: Jase Robertson recently wandered into a New York hotel and asked where the restroom was. The hotel worker, not knowing who he was, escorted him out of the building and pointed him down the street. Jase later reported that he had been a victim of “facial profiling”. We now return you back to this aimlessly meandering blog, still mercilessly in progress and Good Lord why are you still reading it.
The young gentlemen then said some friendly words which are also dictated by Texas law while sitting in a Dairy Queen, and went about his day. Even better still, the moobs went untouched.
I would imagine there will be a point in the coming years where the popularity of the day to day hijinks of the Duck Dynasty gang will wane. We’ve seen it with other reality shows, and I would imagine this one will be no different. I would almost bet that the family will pull the plug on the show before the viewing public does.
Regardless, the show works. The reason it works is because the family doesn’t try to impress us with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the colloquial Mercun language which has unabashedly pushed its way into our vernacular, or the bold displays of wallowing in the muck and mire which Hollywood demands on dumpster-feeding its audiences. Instead, the show reports the patriarch keeping his dignity and modesty intact while he and his wife get massages from grass skirt laden massage hootchies. It shows us an interested father taking his daughter’s suitor out snake hunting in order to size him up. It casts a questionable eye on a man wearing spandex (decorated in woodland camouflage) doing yoga. More importantly, it shows the family at the end of each episode, sitting down to a family meal, and praying.
For that and a host of other reasons, I will continue to wear the shirt around town, in the Texas hill country, and on the I-35 parking lot. Until the smell of cinnamon buns gets replaced with something a little more foul (pun initially not intended but left there just because), I’ll wear it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go take care of some other matters involving the hotel Wi-Fi service, the sound of running water, and my insistent need to pee.
Boom shanka, y’all.
