Meet the Nieratkos: Lonnie Invasion

Sunday we took my wife’s retarded uncle, Lonnie, to see a 60s cover band called The British Invasion Tribute Band at our local community centre. Lonnie, or Lonald as I often call him (or Lon Da Milan or Lonzie or Lonnie Bonnie Bo Bonnie), is a H-U-G-E Beatles fan. He knows every word to every song from every album. The Beatles are his shit. He’s kind of like the retarded version of John Kusak in High Fidelity. And for you music nerds, Lonzie is a purist: strictly vinyl. He has like seven copies of certain albums because he just mangles them to shit. When he plays them on his "victrola" (the only world he’ll use for his record player) he scratches the shit out of them like a hip-hop DJ.

The best is if you call his name for dinner and he’s in the middle of a song. He has to heavy-handedly grab the needle (SCRATCH!), then place it at the end of the song (SCRATCH!) so he can listen to the last few notes and then and only then can he take the needle off (SCRATCH!). He then has to put all his records away, then put the "victrola" in the closet. Not until everything is in its place will Lonnie come and eat. Which is really bizarre because LONNIE LOVES FOOD and any other time you yell to Lonnie that there’s food he comes running. It’s the only exercise he gets.

Rather than describe Lonnie’s reaction to the music Sunday, I figured I’d just show you. I thought the poor guy’s head was going to snap clean off.

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BENNY THE FUNNY DOG

Lately my dog Benny has been getting really into old Seinfeld episodes. It’s all he wants to watch. He’s even taken to adapting parts of Jerry’s routine to his life. Each week I plan to give you one of Benny’s jokes to help you get through the week. Here’s the first one:

“OK, who likes eating cat poop? Raise your hands. What’s up with cat poop? How can an animal poop so delicious?”

CHRIS NIERATKO

For more stupid, go to Chrisnieratko.com