Little Debbie and Jack Johnson in league with the devil

(The face of the devil?)

An old college acquaintance of mine, Grant Gold, couldn't stand Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie cookies. I'd brought a box of them to school (because it was college and bringing an entire box of fat-filled, cream-slathered cookies to snack on before, during, and after class seemed like a good idea) and offered one to Grant. He refused and I didn't think much about it. After he'd turned me down the second or third time, I started to wonder what his damage was. I mean, really, who turns down cookies at all? To my sugar-addled brain, it just didn't compute.

Turns out, when he was a kid, Grant stole a box of cream pie cookies from his family's pantry, hid in a closet, and ate all twelve individually wrapped lard bombs in one, claustrophobic sitting. Or maybe he didn't quite make it through all twelve. He was trying to, of course, because he wanted to get through them all so he didn't have to share with his siblings. He'd gone through the trouble of liberating the cookies and he wanted all the spoils. Being in such a hurry proved to be his undoing. He stuffed them in his mouth so fast, there were adverse effects. He got sick. Very sick. In the closet. Hemmed in by coats, shoes, and umbrellas, Grant lost the contents of his stomach in a spectacular fashion. His mom heard him retching and opened the closet door to find quiet a mess. It wasn't a good day for anyone involved apparently.

Once he told me that story, I understood his feelings for the cream pie cookies fully and I put the box in my bag so he didn't even have to look at the picture on the front.

This story explains my feelings for the music of Jack Johnson. I used to really, really like JJ. I had a copy of his album On and On and I listened to it incessantly. It was soft, mellow, and acoustic - just the way I like a lot of music. (Seriously, for a while it seemed like the only thing I ever listened to was music by lesbians with acoustic guitars -- the Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, Ani Difranco, etc.) But something happened to me somewhere along the way. At some point, Jack's music, specifically that album, started to make me feel like I had just downed my seventh cream pie cookie and was shakily trying to stuff number eight into my cream-and-crumb-covered pie hole. Suddenly, I just couldn't stand it any more. The first few strums of the album opener, "Times Like These" makes my stomach contract. The very sound of track two, "The Horizon Has Been Defeated," gives me shingles. I'm pretty sure if I tried to listen to the whole album in one sitting, my heart would rupture. Then disintegrate. Then catch on fire.

Extreme? Yeah, probably.

There's nothing wrong with his music and nothing wrong with people who like it. Just like there's nothing inherently wrong with Little Debbie cream pie cookies. It's just that too much can turn a good thing into a closet full of puke, know what I mean?

(Satan rides a surfboard.)