Tick Tock, Penguin Walk

If that title looks like nonsense to you, you clearly haven’t spent the entire summer trying (read: putting off and then totally losing track of time) to write your second Annual Summertime Song or ASS as I will OBVIOUSLY refer to it moving forward.

(And if you have not spent your summer in this pursuit, I commend you for your solid life choices.)

As you may or may not recall, 2017 was the inaugural ASS composition which resulted in the fairly palatable Dorilla the Gorilla. Which I like to think was very approachable and unassuming.

This year’s work has entirely too many words. Which, coincidentally, is probably how people are going to describe my book. (COMING THIS OCTOBER. HAVE YOU SEEN THE GORGEOUS SITE WE MADE JUST FOR THE BOOK YET? GO LOOK RIGHT NOW. I’LL WAIT.)

Up until about three months ago, Paul couldn’t match a pitch to save his collection of geodes. I feared he’d inherited his father’s complete lack of musical ability. But out of the blue one morning, he came up with this chorus fully formed, just walked into the living room singing, “Tick tock, penguin walk,” and while bouncing to something approximating a beat.

“Should that be the start of our summer song?” I asked.

“Only if there’s a part about an erupting volcano and an ice cannon,” he answered.

“…and a trampoline!” shouted his little brother.

“…and name the penguin All-alot,” Paul continued. “He needs a friend, though. Name him…”

“TOT!!!!”

I mean. It practically writes itself from there, doncha think? Though in the interest of time we had to scrap the plot suggestions involving hermit crabs, zucchini bread, a grasshopper named Beady the Boodle, and penis cakes.

Yet we managed to eek it in JUST under the wire to qualify as our ASS. Barely. I can’t believe fall is just around the corner already. But that also means BOOK RELEASE is just around the corner. Stay tuned because I have a whole lot of exciting news, special swag for you cool kids, and event dates to announce in these next few weeks.

But for today, let’s simply bask in summer for one last weekend. And laugh at the magic of kids writing stories. And while you do that I’m going to figure out this damn liquor delivery app on my phone because finally getting this song in the bag calls for a very cold beer.