It’s Wednesday. I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment yesterday when I passed a house that was already fully decorated for Halloween. Now, unless someone secretly moved Halloween to August 25th while I wasn’t paying attention, I’m pretty sure it’s still celebrated on October 31st. Hell, it’s not even Labor Day yet!

But apparently, waiting until September—or, God forbid, October—is now completely unacceptable. This house wasn’t just sporting a few pumpkins on the porch, either. Nope. The entire yard had been transformed into a full-blown Halloween spectacular, complete with every creepy character imaginable.

And right in the middle of it all was a 25-foot inflatable Pennywise. Because apparently, a normal-sized clown lurking in your yard wasn’t terrifying enough. And get this: that giant inflatable nightmare will set you back a staggering $599!

Five hundred and ninety-nine dollars for an inflatable clown that will spend two months terrorizing the neighborhood before getting stuffed into a box until next year.

At this rate, Halloween decorations will be going up before the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving will be canceled, and Christmas will be here next week. Give it another month and we’ll be putting up Valentine’s Day decorations.

-keep

It’s Tuesday. “Weird Al” Yankovic is back for his second Tiny Desk Concert, and after all these decades, he’s still going strong—long after many of the musicians he’s parodied have moved on. For his latest Tiny Desk performance, Al and his band delivered a fun mix of originals and parodies, including the Weezer-esque “Skipper Dan,” his Backstreet Boys parody “eBay,” the hilarious closing-credits song “Now You Know” from Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and his American Pie parody, “The Saga Begins.”

-keep

It’s Monday. I don’t know what happened—maybe the planets finally lined up, Mercury stopped being a pain in the ass, or Mother Nature simply took the weekend off—but somehow we got perfect weather this weekend. And even more shocking, I was actually feeling pretty damn good. For once, Mother Nature was on my side.

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous, so the girlfriend and I decided to take advantage of it and get out for a spin. We headed down toward the Kankakee River to enjoy the scenery and visit some friends. The river community can be a little… eccentric. You never quite know what you’re going to find wandering around down there.

This time, we stumbled across a giant gorilla standing outside someone’s house. I have absolutely no idea why there’s a giant gorilla there, what his job is, or whether he was waiting for us to pay a toll. But honestly, when you’ve got a giant gorilla in your yard, asking questions seems unnecessary. At that point, you just admire the commitment to weirdness and keep driving.

On Sunday, Abby and I headed out to the garage, fired up the TV, streamed the NASCAR race while I gave the car a good wash. Naturally, the washing had to compete with Abby’s much more important agenda, so there were several mandatory breaks to play ball. Eventually, the car was clean, the race was over, and Abby had gotten plenty of ball-playing time. I’d call that a pretty productive Sunday.

-keep