A few years ago, The Story Pirates asked kids to send them stories about a made-up holiday. That sounds like a weird thing to do, but it’s actually normal for The Story Pirates. They’re a sketch-comedy group that adapts kids’ stories and performs them on satellite radio. They also do live performances, but usually just in California and New York. So for us, they’re just on the radio.
Anyway.
They wanted stories about made-up holidays, and Poppy and Pete decided they’d each write one. So they did, and we submitted them, and a few weeks later I got an email from a real, live Story Pirate asking my permission to produce Poppy’s story for the show. They were kind enough to send me an audio file of the performance after it had aired, and today seemed like the appropriate time to share it with you.
“White Friday” by Poppy & The Story Pirates
Didn’t they do a wonderful job? If you know Poppy, it’s pretty easy to pick out the lines they pulled verbatim from the source material. Pete was also thrilled that they included the cheeseburgers, as his entire story was a celebration of them.
I hope you have a thoroughly relaxing White Friday!
Rockford says: “The little movie that could! This was a low-budget film that really took us all by storm. I first saw ‘Rocky’ when I was 6 years old. ‘Rocky’ I and II were some of the movies that stand out the most from when I was that young. What I remember about ‘Rocky’ was, it was the first movie I saw where you had a protaganist that came from such a difficult and/or meager existance. It was also one of the first movies that I remember seeing where the protagonist mirrors where he’s from so much. Rocky is Philadelphia and Philadelphia is Rocky. Where else is there a statue of a movie character? ‘Rocky’ is gettig up before the dawn, slogging to work, and doing everything you can to suport the ones you love. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other while also trying to better yourself.”
Rockford says: “This is a movie that I did not fully appreciate until I entered the world of business travel. This was one of the first movies to — in a fun but real way — point at the new business-travel culture that was emerging in the 1980s and the problems that came with it. The fact that we’re always in some kind of vehicle and what happens when all of those modes of trasnportation for whatever reason completely crap out. That aside, it’s a very well-done buddy comedy that features two of the best comedians of their era opposite one another. Without giving anything away, it also has a very poignant twist. It’s a movie about getting home to be with the people that you love.”
Rockford says: “Oh, is that Thanksgiving? I guess it is Thanksgiving.
Rockford says: “This is a Thanksgiving movie? Really?? 
Rockford says: “Boy I haven’t seen that in a long time. Up until ‘Nobody’s Fool’ I wasn’t really a fan of realism in film. I could appreciate it, but didn’t really enjoy it. Here’s a tale of a broken and bitter man who lives by his own set of rules that have developed through years of disappointment, discouragement and failure, and this is a brief glimpse into his life complete with the bad stuff and the good stuff.”
Rockford says: “Yeah, family is hard. This is another example of kind of, family warts and all. It’s the anti-John Hughes experience. The holidays brought to you by every painful holiday you’ve experienced. You have the peace-keeping father, who placates his daughter; a caustic mother-daughter relationsship; and it all kind of comes to a head around the Thanksgiving dinner table. The beauty of this film is that is shows what family is — taking these gritty, not-so-great pieces of each other and accepting them and wrapping your arms around it. It’s seeing love and kindness in places where you might not expect it.”