Jonny Numb

Today I went back to the doctor for my one-month checkup.

Good news! My blood work verifies I am not a vampire, and that I am in quality health!

(I guess this would be bad news for folks who have a thing for vampires. Sorry?)

I haven’t had any incidents of blood in my phlegm since that one incident, so the doctor said I could wean myself off the omezaprole (every other day for the next 2 weeks).

Next health-related project: getting a sleep study done to see if I actually have sleep apnea, or if I just like to have a snore every now and then (because who doesn’t fancy a good honk-shoo-honk-shooo?). Will keep you all posted.

Today, the guy who set me up for the EKG and successfully drew my blood during my last appointment handled the preliminaries: height, weight, blood pressure, pulse; along with the regimen of questions that get asked during every visit.

In any case, he mentioned he had the same Skinny Puppy tour shirt – of the sun-scorched man – that I was wearing, which led down a brief rabbit-hole of conversation about how we were both at their “final” show in Philly last year, which led to yet another brief conversation about how we were both at the recent Ministry/Gary Numan/Frontline Assembly show in Bethlehem, PA.

He lamented how he was the only person in his school (somewhere in Maryland) who listened to that sort of music, and I shared that I, too, was in the minority of Puppy fans at Eastern York…but even more so during my junior and senior years at Spring Grove. (I was rather out of place in a student population that aspired more to country music, line dancing, and the legacy of the Confederacy than Canadian weirdoes who sprayed fake blood and jizz on the audience during their live shows.)

As I made my way home from the appointment, I contemplated a few possible stops along Route 74 – the Dover Antique Mall; Music Dungeon in Dillsburg – but ultimately decided to resist temptation and simply listen to my growling stomach, so I stopped at the Neato Burrito in Lemoyne.

The thing about Neato Burrito is: they’re set up like a Subway, and have a signature menu item called a Cowboy Crunch (which I get every time). The staff are always on the younger side and casually dressed (band or ironic T-shirts; thrift-store ballcaps; dyed hair) for that “hip” vibe.

Anyway: the store wasn’t too busy (as it was an odd time), and the twentysomething girl who handled my order had black hair, a septum piercing, and a ripped Twin Temple T-shirt.

I found myself trying to place Twin Temple in my mental musical rolodex, thinking the name sounded familiar…but I quickly realized I was thinking about Twin Tribes.

I had a weird inclination that the girl, much in the way I was curious about her Twin Temple shirt, was curious about my Puppy shirt. As she worked on the remaining assembly of my burrito, she asked:

“What is Skinny Puppy? Is it a band?”

I responded in the affirmative, opting not to make some lame joke about how that question made me feel very old (haw haw). When she asked what type of music they were, I responded with my placeholder of “Industrial…y’know, electronic” (though it came out sounding more like a question). I’ve never been good with all the breakout subsets of the genre that have sprouted up over the decades of its existence – it’s always just been “Industrial” to me. I assume people hear the word and imagine clanging metal and general disharmony.

I went on to clarify, “They called it quits last year, but you should still check them out!”

She asked if they were on Spotify. I assumed so (seems like everything is on there, even though I’ve never used it). As my burrito toasted, the conversation shifted into weird movies on Tubi (which I’ve never used, despite everyone’s insistence that it’s the best streaming service for horror), and how I simply can’t return to the “watch something with commercials” format that defined my childhood.

I’ll admit it: I’m a snob. I’ve been spoiled by the privilege of being able to afford (and therefore amass) physical media and being able to watch movies and listen to albums uninterrupted without some asshole trying to sell me something.

In any event, the Cajun chicken in the burrito was very spicy. And maybe she actually will check out Skinny Puppy and become a posthumous fan. And it was just cool to have a day where I got double feedback on my T-shirt.

As the cool kids used to – and will continue to say: brap on.