October Diaries Bonus: “Zeke the Plumber” — Salute Your Shorts
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Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Jesse, Sean & Christof—
October 2nd, 2016:
Salute Your Shorts — Zeke the Plumber
Year: 1991
Director: Jefferson Kibbee
Format: Streaming
From Wiki: When the campers are gathered around telling ghost stories, Budnick tells the story of Zeke the Plumber.
Christof’s Take:
What I Liked:
I liked remembering having seen it as a kid. The bit about ruffled potato chips is something I recall several times a year, but I didn’t remember it was the same episode that contained Zeke the Plumber’s lore.
What I Didn’t Like:
What’s not to like?!
Final Thoughts:
I’m just writing this because Max drew the thing.
Sean’s Take:
Mary had the delightful idea to program a ghost-centric episode of SALUTE YOUR SHORTS to tie tonight’s viewing with Michael “Donkeylips†Bower from the Nickelodeon show who appeared in THE WILLIES from the day before.
This episode was a “spooky†one where Budnick got under everyone’s skin — as Budnicks are prone to do — by telling the story of Zeke the Plumber. The story itself was pretty half-baked but it manages to get under the other camper’s skin and they devise a way to enact revenge on the boy with the red mullet.
I hadn’t seen the show in a decade or two and was impressed I laughed as earnestly and as often as I did. It wasn’t masterful but a show with this title was never had such lofty aims. I was surprised it had such a good comic rhythm (this was the show’s only second episode).
We all had a pretty good time with this — specially impressive considering most trips you take into alleyways of nostalgia this dark usually just end up leaving you feeling mugged.
What I liked:
Serving this up as an appetizer for tonight’s entree was a great move, and it held significant importance for me. When we watched The Willies, and I knew I’d seen the creepy bug boy Gordy in something before, but I couldn’t place it. Christof tells me “He was in salute your shorts†someone else says “He was Donkeylips†and I kinda nodded and accepted it. I knew this was a show I’d seen, but I still couldn’t remember anything about it. So seeing an episode was a really cool trip down memory lane, and it was also a startling trip down memory loss lane, as this show had completely been removed from my mind palace.
What I didn’t like:
*N/A
Final thoughts:
I didn’t know my brain had started doing this, and I still don’t remember anything that happened in any other episode of the show. But hey, at for some reason I can tell you that What a Girl Wants starring Amanda Bynes made around 50 million at the box office with out having to look it up. So go figure.