Mr. Pickles' Digital Mayhem

Weddings galore this summer, friends!

Wedding One: A couple of weeks ago, I went to my cousin's wedding held on a Virginia plantation. We all got cowboy hats as wedding favors and some guy with a mullet danced a jig. Somebody wrote "I Heart the Groom" on their butt and showed it to the bride. I stole some silverware because it had squirrels on it.

Wedding Two: Box and Lady Box got married last night in Des Moines. A chicken nugget officiated. That's awesome.

Wedding Three: I'm leaving for Ireland on Wednesday to head to my friend, Kate's wedding. She's getting married in Sneem to a bloke named Angus. A local wrestler named The Crusher has his own statue in the town square. I hope that's where the wedding photos are taken.

These could be the 3 best weddings in the history of nuptials.

These past couple of months have turned me into a political talk show junkie.  The Obama v. Clinton throwdown sure has me hooked on Keith Oberman and the best show to ever run against Jeopardy - Hardball with Chris Matthews.  First of all this show has the best name ever.  So great that I named Mr. Friend's new dog Hardballs.

He's pretty much crazy just like Chris Matthews and his guests.  Among my favorites:  the guy who looks just like Murray from Flight of the Conchords (he makes us yell "Murray! in a New Zealand accent), the newspaper reporter who criticizes the Bush administration and the lady in front of the Seattle backdrop.  These guys sure know how to play Hardball! 

Its the 2nd week of May so it completely makes sense for us to be establishing our 2008 business goals for the Gold Coast Traveler now. Harry Molar got me, Whiskers, Myrna Gooch and the rest of the staff in a conference room to give us a pocket guide/stressball/pen combo with our mission statement and then told us we all needed to establish goals to increase readership.

We're starting with the obvious ideas: adding Ziggy & Family Circus to the front page and featuring guest reporters. Our first guest is some weirdo called Mr. Mix Tape. Just look at him. You'll see what I mean. His first feature hit today and as weird as he looks, he seems to have his finger on the pulse of some super hot tunes.

Happy February 2008!  

I know it's been a while since my last blog, so here's what's new...

I went to New York for the Thanksgiving Day Parade, where Mr. Friend dared me to kick the Charlie Brown balloon in the chonch.  Long story short - I'm now banned from Macy's for life.

I had a nice Christmas with my parents.  My pops got me a velour track-suit and my moms got me a Boggle game.  So now I can cross those things off my list.

And, I took a nice long trip to Germany, on assignment for the Gold Coast Traveler.  It was for our bi-annual glockenspiels & schneeballen issue.  First stop - Munich!  If you saw that movie Munich - it's nothing like that.

Munich is famous for its beer halls!  I met up with our Bavarian bureau chief Kaiser von Pretzelface and his charming wife Helga.  They took me to the Hofbrauhaus and the liters of beer began to flow.  My memory is a bit fuzzy here, but I remember eating 5 sausages, a plate of mashed potatoes, and arm wrestling Helga.

When I woke up the next morning, I found that I was the proud owner of a beer bottle-fanny pack contraption and a case of gingerbread necklaces.  All for just 950 euros!

Stay tuned for more from Austria!

Ahoy, friends!  I get dozens of letters from readers every day, and I usually throw them out.  But, I actually read one recently and thought I would answer as part of a new Blog Feature - Mr. Pickles' Mail Sack!

"Dear Mr. Pickles,

Do you have any tattoos?

Sincerely,
Mim Slo-Tar
East Jesusville, Arkansas"

Great question, Mim.  I do not have any tattoos, but I've been thinking a lot about getting one lately.  Like most teens these days, I've been keeping a tattoo journal, which catalogs all of my tattoo ideas and I've narrowed it down to six.  

1.  "The Tupac".  Hey, home-slices!  I'm hip to the hippity-hippity-hop!   (You don't stop!)  And, what better way to show my "props"  to my dizzle fa-snizzle Tupac than by getting his famous tat replicated on my belly?  He would have been very proud!  

2.   "The Italian".  As a pickle, I can't grow hair. I recently went to the Italian Riveria resort town Cinque-Tortellini and was amazed by all the body hair.  I think the only way I can get a spicy Italian mama to notice me is to get some hair inked on.  Mr. Pickles wants some Italian sugar!!!

3.  "Birds".  Did you know that sailors in ancient sailor days got birds tattooed on their chest as a sign that they were well-travelled?  It's true.  And, as a reporter for Chicago's seventh best travel magazine, I think this is a really appropriate design!  Chirp Chirp!  

4.  "Draco!".  I call this one Draco, because he's a dragon, get it?  Dragons are ferocious and so am I.  That's what I'm telling the world when I get this bad-boy!  

5.  "Prepster".  On the other hand, I'm also what the ladies call "metro-sexual", which means I polish my shoes regularly and I drive a Passat.  From what I understand, us "metros" also like to dress up.  Since I don't really wear clothes, I though I'd just get an alligator inked onto my chest.  Clever, huh?

6.  "Huck".  My cousin, Mr. Friend, said I should just get something that I really like a lot and will behappy with for the rest of my life.  I can't think of anything that brings more joy to my life than Huckleberry Hound comics.  So, this one is the leading candidate.  

What do you think, readers?  

My favorite piece of mail upon returning to Chicago was Mr. Friend's latest New Yorker submission. 

It took me longer than I expected to find Professor Shitake in this futuristic land of Hong Kong.   A Kowloon night market vendor tipped me off to the Professor's location after I bought 10 miniature statues of Mao and some dragon's breath candy (which is basically a Kellogg's Mini Wheat and should never be confused with candy!)   When I found the Professor's hideaway, I was greeted by his new wife, Professor Porcini- a lovely Italian bird that he met in Milan.  Together they had been working on inventions, theorems, hypotheses, and new fuel concepts to power Turtle Jet Packs and reduce Hong Kong's reliance on power pellets.  I spent the afternoon with the Professors and their man-servant, Dr. ChowChow, learning about the energy crisis of the future and brainstorming on possible solutions.  Here were my contributions:

- Have Turtles take the train on Sundays

- Put more quarters into the clouds to create more pellets

- Go to the Kowloon night market with your own bag, instead of taking paper or plastic

The Professors were grateful for my contributions and said that they would take the DeLorean into the future to confirm that I would win a Nobel Prize.  My work here in Hong Kong is done.   

Stardate 2007: I landed in Hong Kong to learn that it has evolved and I am now in the future. Turtles fly around with jet packs, Picachu are over-populated and operate all of the cabs and Vivienne Westwoods. Power pellets are the currency and rain from the sky when you eat floating strawberries and jump over barrels. I decided that I should seek out my old teacher, Professor Shitake. When I last saw him 20 years ago, Professor Shitake stole some plutonium, got into his DeLorean, and beep-bop-booped the flux compacitor. Surely he must have landed in this land of the future.

Allo Gov'nors!

So, I spent the entire day yesterday lost in Harrods - one of the most ginormous department stores in the world (literally over 1million square feet of selling space). I went in for a toothbrush. It took me seven hours to find one. Here's a not-so-fun fact: If you need to pee in Harrods, you either have to buy something or pay £1. That's like $2.50 American!!!

Once I got my toothbrush and a map to the exit, I passed through Harrods new hookah bar. Big mistake. There's a pretty big water-pipe-smoking demographic in London, so I thought I'd give it a go. I met a giant caterpillar and he suggested I try something he called Summer Breezes. Well, friends, there was definitely "something" blowing through the jasmine of my mind this afternoon.

To make a long story short, I'm pretty sure I spent the night making out with the statue in the middle of Piccadilly Square in front of about 700 Japanese tourists. Can't wait to leave London....