Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 by Stacy
Hello everyone, Stacy the newsgirl here to talk to you about the recent episode, We know...it perhaps was thought-provoking, heartwarming, and yes, the most talked about podcast in recent memory. (I'm lying.)
We here at DQYDJ are dedicated to putting up the finest episodes for our listeners--
What?
You haven't heard the latest episode?
Are you serious?
What's that? Melanie hasn't put it up yet? Again?
My apologies listeners. It's odd because the last time I was late/absent from a podcast Melanie threatened to have me flogged with my own printer wires. And let me tell you, when she starts swingin'...those puppies sting!
Well, in any case if the episode isn't up soon I will simply have to post here yet
another slide show of DQYDJ family photos.
For instance, look down here:
This one? I remember it well. This picture was taken in the summer of '73.
It's a picture of me outside my first psychiatrist visit!
I had watched a tv show showing Martians whose heads looked like cabbages, and was scared of produce for the rest of that summer. Well, Mel took it upon herself to strew lettuce leaves around and under my bed and told me that the aliens were looking for me and were coming back for me in my sleep. Hence the need for mental health visits.
This one? This one is particularly colorful. Notice how the bruises on my arm go from a vibrant and deep purple all through the spectrum to a light and frothy green?
She gave me this one when she got into bed one night when we were, oh, about 9 and 11, and I had hid under her repulsive sleeping bag she insisted having in her bed. When I growled and grabbed her as she was getting comfortable it must have startled her as she punched me repeatedly...for about a half hour.
Then she put me in a headlock...but that's another picture.
This last bit of memory lane comes from a family vacation to Arkansas. We were going home through Missouri and decided to stop by Merimac Caverns. As you can see the security force are everywhere searching for me...after Melanie told me that the aliens with cabbage heads were at the door and calling for me by name because it was their lunch time.
It's OK, though, because it shaped me for the arduous task of sometimes living in the sub-basement at the DQYDJ headquarters!
So there's an upside to everything, right?!?!
This is a postcard I got from our foreign correspondent from Jamaica.
Well, that's all listeners. Thanks for viewing our website and hopefully you will be listening to an episode soon. Have a good day...and a pleasant tomorow!
Stacy the Newsgirl
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Blast from the past
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Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 by Melanie
Friends and neighbors, it's Melanie's birthday today. In celebration, I have a special edition of "Melanie -- It's Your Life!"
Melanie: The Formative YearsMelanie was born many years ago in 1966, in the middle of a blazing hot July afternoon. Her parents, relatively practical yet sweaty people, decided shortly after her birth that they should begin Melanie's life by teaching her thrift and the value of hard work for what they saw as their special and talented first born.
Therefore they sold her to a Taiwanese sweatshop to earn money for their air conditioning bill.
Upon returning, Melanie discovered that she was a sister. Her little sister Stacy was playing there in the playpen, eager to meet her older and wiser sister, and surrounded by many, many toys. Most of them, coincidentally, made by Melanie herself.
That evening, Stacy was found beaten unconscious with a Bozo doll.
(For those of you who are not familiar with Chicago, Bozo was a part-time clown who had his own TV show during the 60's and 70's. His other job was a bus driver. When punishing kids on his route he would take toys and games away from them and give them away on his show during something called "The Grand Prize Game.")
Melanie: 8 years oldMelanie is kicked out of ballet school for wearing a nude body stocking and doing an interpretive dance entitled, "The Reproductive Cycle of our Class Hamster Blinky."
Horrified, her dance instructors put a stop to the number, but the damage was already done. Floods of phone calls came in from distraught parents demanding answers. Why, they wanted to know, were their daughters all crying about something called "The Dilated Cervix Waltz"? With no other recourse, the instructors were forced to expel Melanie, not knowing the genius that resided in the small body haughtily walking out their doors.
Upon getting in the car that fateful night Melanie then proceeded to tell our mother that the instructors pulled her hair because she didn't do a step right and they were talentless hoofers. Furthermore, she would never darken their doorstep again. Melanie and I were promptly pulled out of classes, as were all of the other students, and the studio went bankrupt.
Melanie: Disneyworld, 12 years oldOur family trip to Florida occurred during a staff shortage at the famed Disneyworld Theme Park. Allegedly the only person the manager could find to put in the Donald Duck suit that fateful day was a person of shorter stature who normally worked in the Snow White ride. Melanie, hot, sticky and annoyed at Stacy for making her go on the Haunted House ride for the 35th time that day, shoved Stacy in the back, setting off a chain of events that lives in the annals of Disney history.
The carnage that was to ensue is
STILL denied by Disney administration to this day.
Stacy, at the time of Melanie's vicious attack, was innocently dressing her hamburger with ketchup at a condiment stand. After being shoved, Stacy violently fell into the condiment cart, overturning it and splattering enormous jugs of ketchup all down the neck of Donald Duck standing a few feet away, signing autographs. Sliding in the slop of the dumped condiments, the cart slid and hit Donald in the ducktail, making his head wobble off and roll down the fairway.
Orlando newspapers have it recorded that Donald Duck ran headless down Main street USA, with ketchup bleeding down his neck screaming, "MY HEAD, WHERE'S MY HEAD?!?!!?"
Seeing the melee of parents and toddlers running in the wake of headless, seemingly bloody Donald, Melanie and Stacy decide to try Space Mountain.
Melanie: 15 yrs old1981: Stacy's 8th grade graduation party. Melanie patiently explains to Stacy and her friend Kathy how alcohol will kill brain cells. After what is a brilliant and moving explanation on the part of Melanie, Stacy and Kathy decide to dedicate themselves to the interest of science -- and begin consuming alcohol in large quantities.
After years and years of intense and dedicated research, Melanie slips in a puddle of Stacy or Kathy's beer vomit (OK, probably Stacy's) and tragically slams her head into the cheap pine paneling.
A period of temporary insanity ensues, ushering in what will be known as "Merman: The Dark Years."
Kathy and Stacy, in a heroic attempt to save Melanie, continue drinking heavily.
Fortunately, fate steps in when Melanie goes outside to try and stop them from putting a pony keg into a snow bank & setting the neighbor's garage roof on fire. She slips on thin ice and miraculously comes to her senses.
Kathy and Stacy celebrates Melanie's amazing recovery with a case of Special Export and smoking cigarettes.
Melanie: Falls in loveMelanie finds interest in computers and meets a young, handsome man online.
Stacy counters with putting Melanie's name in an advertisement for mail-order brides in Taiwan. Stacy receives many offers but the best one is for the owner of the sweatshop where, coincidentally, Melanie used to work as a toddler.
This brings deep-seated rage from Melanie's subconscious, and she beats Stacy senseless with a clown doll she got at a Mardi Gras parade, screaming, "NO MORE THAI FOOD! NO MORE THAI FOOD!"
Upon awakening from her coma, Stacy finds Melanie happily married and living in England. Stacy expresses her concerns about Melanie marrying an unknown Englishman and Melanie assures her that she is fine and happy. Stacy sends her a copy of
The Files of Jack The Ripper as a wedding gift.
Melanie: EuropeMelanie and Lyndon move around a great deal in hopes of avoiding any visits from Kathy and Stacy.
Melanie: Present dayMelanie is now a technical writer in a prosperous career with a wonderful and loyal husband. Kathy and Stacy are very happy for her. Especially because Melanie is buying a house in the near future with 3-4 bedrooms, one of them being a dedicated guest room which Stacy and Kathy feel they need to take full advantage of, especially if Melanie decides to get a nice hot tub, preferably with lots of jets and a bar attached directly outside their guest room. Stacy prefers the color purple for a room color and Kathy requests a massage table and possibly a pedicure chair for when Consuela has free time to do her feet.
This ends Melanie's birthday -- This is your Life!!
Posted in
Blast from the past
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Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 by Pat Gaik
Hello, pumpkins! I'm starting a new feature on our blog here - When we were 'yungins!
Melanie received a scan of an old news clipping (thanks, cousin George!) featuring us "back in the day." She was 16 (going on 17) and I was 17 (going on 18) and we were attending an awards banquet where we won 2nd (Mel) and 3rd (Me) place in a logo design competition for the East Side Chamber of Commerce during our high school days. She looks no different today! I, however...(womp womp). I don't know what the hell is up with my sultry expression, I must have thought I looked sexy!
Jerry, you're up next! Maybe something from the Eisenhower administration?
Posted in
Blast from the past
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