Jhonen Vasquez, �SQUEE�S Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors�
We�re going to have to delve slightly into hipsterville here for my references, ok? I�ll bypass all the obvious Invader Zim and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac allusions, because frankly, those have been done o death by others, and all you need to do is walk into a Hot Topic store to see that I ain�t lying.
I�m not saying I was the first person to discover Jhonen — I wasn�t. But I was early enough on the bandwagon to where his works were only available to those who dared enter a comic shop to buy the individual issues, instead of the safe environment of the local mall. And after Jhonen abandoned Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, I was in on the early first runs of his new endeavor, entitled SQUEE!
Switching his focus from a brooding adolescent to a child might not seem like a stroke of genius. After all, children are funny, particularly if you put them in life-threatening situations. But I was hooked from the beginning, and one of the things I loved stemmed from the title.
SQUEE! That says it all, doesn�t it? Especially for a book involving a child with an overactive imagination? What truly made it brilliant was that Jhonen took those five letters and an exclamation point and subverted it. �SQUEE!� In the hands of a standard child signifies glee in an over-exuberant way that only children can pull off without you wanting to wring their necks. It�s the sound of an �ber-excited kid shrieking in delight, and that thought can�t help but make you smile. But, as Jhonen showed quickly in this book, �SQUEE!� can easily mean a shriek of sheer terror when they are faced with the cold hard facts that their parents, teachers, and every single other authority figure are, in reality, face eating aliens.
I�ve made several SQUEE! noises myself as of late, and I learned the proper intonation about a decade before. I was, at the time, dating the girl whom I usually refer as �the crazy ex-girlfriend.� That�s not what I called her at the time, however. I think I called her �fuckbag� while we dated. In any case, during one of our early dates, I was wearing my Squee! shirt. She noticed it, being a Jhonen Vasquez fan herself. Still, as I said in that last entry, I was heavier at that time, which made it easy for her to say she didn't think the character was supposed to go in so many directions.
SQUEE!
I mean, I have pretty thick skin, and this girl and I had built a relationship that revolved around insulting each other, but still...
SQUEE!
Fast forward a decade. Last month, I was all set to travel to the land of White Folk. I already detailed my fear of parental figures, so that�s not worth bringing up again, except for the fact that I was ABOUT TO MEET PARENTS!
SQUEE!
Still, I had enough time to mentally prepare. I took my funeral suit to the cleaners and bought a few shirts that buttoned up the front ending with a collar to wear over my shirts which read �The Naked Cult of Hickey: Amerikkka Must Perish!� The hardest part of that endeavor was finding dress shirts that didn�t feature Hawaiian flowers or hula girls, but I managed.
I was dropped off at the airport early enough to where I wouldn�t have any of the famous airport incidents that I�ve had in the past. Everything went smoothly and it didn�t take long before I was on my plane, which was fairly empty, leaving me with two empty seats near the emergency exit. This meant I also had leg room. I settled in, ready for one of the few times where I would have a hassle and stress free flight. And then the Captain�s voice came over the radio.
�Ladies and gentlemen,� he said, �We�ll be taking off in just a few minutes. The weather looks like it will be a clear shot all the way to Los Angeles, so just sit back and relax. Once we�ve hit a cruising altitude, our staff will bring about a beverage and snack, and then shortly after we�ll begin our feature presentation with Big Momma�s House 2.�
SQUEE!!!
Look, I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles, and I know at least two of them read this blog fairly regularly, so answer me this: Why would you let people get away with a travesty such as Big Momma�s House 2? It seems to me if you made an example out of the stars, director and screenwriters by, say, marching them along Hollywood Boulevard with their hands and feet bound while allowing the crowd to prod them along with sharp sticks until they collapsed from exhaustion, you�d have a lot fewer films like this.
I�d say more about the horror that was Big Momma�s House 2, but two days after I returned, The Onion ran this story, proving that the Onion staff writers are mining my brain for comedy gold while I�m passed out in a cheap whiskey haze.
SQUEE!!!
Twenty two hours later, I landed in Rhode Island. I met Kelly in the airport and we walked outside to meet her sister. Her sister was the one responsible for all of this, as she got a wild hair up her ass and decided to get married. Since I was travelling alone and didn�t know anybody, I was allowed to join the bachelorette party, meaning I would be accompanying a gaggle of frisky girls determined to have a last go at the wild life before losing another of their members to the Church and State.
That all sounds good in itself � being the only male in a group of females who are drinking heavily and feeling frisky as we go from bar to bar in Massachusetts. As we pull into the first place, however, it�s made clear that I am to be the designated driver.
SQUEEE!!!!!
The night finally ends, with the bride-to-be passed out in the back seat. Kelly, knowing my aversion to driving, particularly with strange cars on strange roads, directs me down a backwoods route. And backwoods is right. Miles advance without ever passing a corporate logo. In fact, many of the storefronts (all closed at this time at night) look like they were built out of Lincoln Logs. The rustic atmosphere is so prevalent, I see albino retarded banjo playing freak children who aren�t really there.
Or at least, I hope they weren�t really there.
Even the store names don�t seem to have a lot of thought behind it, especially after seeing the �No Name Grocery Outlet.� I just hope the town�s sense of apathy holds up when they wake up the next morning to find a smartass city slicker such as myself has rolled into town.
After an eternity of winding through the backwoods, we reach the house that Kelly spent her childhood. I park the car and the bride-to-be awakens with a shot and sprints into the house to use the bathroom. We load up our luggage and enter through the side door by the kitchen, whereupon Kelly excuses herself to use another bathroom leaving me to stare at the sword mounted against the living room wall. Kelly told me about this sword but I had secretly hoped she was kidding. Now I�m staring at it, and it looks sharper than any sword needs to be.
SQUEEE!!!!!!
I�m frozen in one spot near the kitchen, not wanting to wander in an unknown household, waiting for Kelly to reappear so she can provide me with direction on what to do next. And then I hear steps coming down the stairwell. Big, purposeful steps. Nobody turns the corner, however, and I hear a disembodied female voice coming from the foray.
�I�m glad you guys are home now, but I was this close to calling the police and hospitals because I didn�t know where you were.�
I don�t answer, still staring at the mounted sword.
�Don�t you have anything to say?�
The silent scream of �SQUEE!� must not have been so silent as a little frightened noised escaped from my lips.
�What was that?�
�I tightened my lips but could still feel the sound reverberating in my head. squee! Finally, I spoke: �I think you want to talk to somebody besides myself,� I managed to squeak out.
�Where�s my daughter?� said the voice from the staircase.
�Which daughter? One already went to bed. Kelly�s in the bathroom right now...� I heard the toilet flush and breathed a quick sigh of relief angling over to use Kelly�s body as a shield for whomever appeared from the staircase.
And of course, the SQUEE! cry isn�t only for dealing with parental figures who live on the East Coast. Jesus, tonight I went to work and was told that my punk DJ night was on immediate hiatus starting tomorrow because they want to have a foam party for the summer crowd. At first I was simply disappointed because my night was the only night where I didn�t cringe at 80 percent of the song selection. But then I realized that if I wasn�t working in the DJ booth, that meant I was on clean-up detail at the end of the night... meaning I�d be cleaning up after a foam party.
SQUEEE!!!!!
And then there was the e-mail waiting for me from my sister when I got home. I opened it, reading the seven words she bothered to write.
�You are going to be an uncle.�
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
