The One About Pancake Day

Category: weekleez

the one about pancake day
tuesday, february 20, 2001

oh dear, it must be tuesday or something.

on saturday i had the pleasure of attending the annual local kiwanis pancake day. i’m almost certain that there isn’t a single local kiwanis on this list so i feel pretty comfortable about making fun of their pancake day. you know how those kiwani are. they’re mean and violent and wouldn’t think twice about lopping off my head for sport. a kiwanis is much like a viking but very much not like a ninja.

actually, i was really excited about pancake day. i had been looking forward to it for about three (3) weeks. and when i woke up on saturday i was feeling rather sick and sadly could not attend the pancake festivities.
or so i thought.

around noon i started to feel better and so i went and picked up my dad (ain’t no way i’m going to that thing by myself), and he and i went to pancake day. wow. i mean, wow. it’s amazing how many people turn out for this kind of thing.

only on pancake day would hundreds of people choose to wait in line 35 minutes for a short stack and slightly charred sausage. i mean, 15 minutes at the huddle house and people start freaking out, but standing in line at pancake day is different somehow. strange, huh?

and wait in line we did.
one would think that waiting in line could cause a frenzy. i mean, these are hungry people, they want their pancakes, and by god, they want them now. but the kiwanis have thought of everything. they provide musical entertainment. and as we all know music soothes the savage beast or in this case, the hungry mob.

when we first walked in the place i heard the distinct sound of a…. calliope? huh?
“when did they get a merry-go-round?” i asked.
i’m thinking, merry-go-round + tummies full of pancakes = a sticky mess.
but not to worry, there wasn’t a merry-go-round. the lovely sounds were coming from an man playing an organ. apparently this was the kiwani idea of musical entertainment. oh dear.

i appreciate many forms of music as well as many musical instruments. and the organ is a terrific instrument, but only if you’re at a hockey game or church. i mean, let’s face it, the harmonics of the organ and the scarffing of pancakes and sausages just don’t mix. there’s no balance sonically and/or gastrically. don’t look at me like that.

and you gotta understand that after standing in line for half an hour listening to the organ, well, all the songs start to sound the same. and i don’t mean that they all sound alike, what i mean is that a song will start out as, let’s say, “All of Me” (a classic) and it will end up sounding like “Lady of Spain” (also a classic, but it’s an annoying organ/accordian classic). it’s true, all organ songs end as “Lady of Spain”. (look, it’s a proven fact. quit looking at me like that.)

and i give the organ grinder a lot of respect, he tried, he really did. i half expected to hear “Take Me Out to the Ballgame….Lady of Spain” but i didn’t. he tried to “mix up da flava” of the musical choices. and i appreciated that. some of the tunes i heard that morning were “Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-dot Bikini….Lady of Spain” and i think i heard “In the Good ol’ Summertime….Lady of Spain” as well as “Yes, We Have No Bananas….Lady of Spain”.
all in all a pretty diverse set.

my buddies laura, liz, and megs went to pancake day about an hour earlier than i, and laura said that their musical entertainment was a guy playing a saxophone. i don’t know about you, but i’d choose a wurlitzer over a conn any day. (by the way, that was an inside joke that probably only i would ever laugh at, sorry).

so dad and i finally got our pancakes, and we sat down to feast. the pancakes weren’t bad. the sausages were….well, kinda like hockey pucks, which fit in really well with the organ music. there were two older people who sat down in front of us and they were so happy to be there. it was great, i swear the old man smiled the whole time he was eating. and luckily he had more tickets because he was still hungry after eating his first stack.

dad looked over at me and said, “well, i guess we’ll come back in a couple of hours for lunch…this IS pancake DAY.” and then we joked about choking down more pancakes for dinner in honor of the whole day being pancake day. which dad carried one step further by recalling how they used to have pancake week. which was a gruesome week of nothing but tall stacks and syrup day and night. and of course talking about this with dad in front of two strangers was the most hilarious thing and i must say that was the best pancake day ever. of course, that was the first pancake day i’ve ever been to so i really have nothing to compare it with.

one thing that really surprised me though was the amount of cell phones i saw at pancake day. geez, can you not enjoy 40 minutes of pancake day without having to send or receive a call? i’m sure that half of the calls went something like this, “dude! i’m here at pancake day and they’ve got the best organist EVER!”
heh, but really, when did pancake day go digital? weird.

on a side note, i heard a horrible noise coming from the bathroom just now and i went to inspect it and it was mom using a water pik. gads, what an awkward contraption. what sadistic maniac invented that? you need a tyvek suit and safety glasses to use that thing. the medicinal water was shooting out of her cheek on to me and the mirror and she nearly drowned.

the commercials say how easy to use and gentle it is. what a crock! you could pressure wash sidewalks with that thing! after the initial screams of shock she finally finished and she says to me, “wow, that’s messy. you wanna try it? we’ve got some clean heads for it.” my luck it would blast my teeth right out and i’d have to gum down my pancakes next year.

it’s all true don’tcha know.

next week’s episode: jaimie tries the water pik.

jaimie “when did pancake day go digital” pickle
(bet you thought i was going to use “Lady of Spain didn’tcha?)

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