Meech.one here.  Unless you’ve been deprived of internet connection for the past, oh I don’t know, five months or so, I’m sure the #1 most visited site in your browser’s history is I want to go the the zoo with Roy Halladay.  The site’s founder, and wanter of going to the zoo with Roy (we’ll call him ZWR), has become a national phenomenon over the past few months because of his extraordinary MS Paint skillz, animal-friendly content, child-like enthusiasm, and fashionable t-shirts.   He’s even the artist behind Philadelphia Eagles TE Brent Celek’s Twitter background page!  It seems everybody wants to know ZWR nowadays. Well, I asked him if he would answer a few questions about himself, his Phillies fandom, and his fondness for zoos.  He obliged. 

Enjoy.

First Phillies conundrum that I can remember
In the summers, when I was very young, a different string band would play every Tuesday night in the Mummers Museum parking lot- which was also our two hand touch football field and around the block from my house. Everyone in the neighborhood would go, and it was particularly fun when one of the better (or more popular/local) bands would perform. Advance to a night on which the biggest was scheduled… and add to it the inherent excitement of the things that make our childhood summers special in recollect: perfect weather, the smell of charcoal burning, the sing-song melodies of Mister Softee trucks. All of it there in a flawed but familial grid of rowhomes. Only the Phillies were playing the Astros, I was wearing my powder blue jersey, Houston had the Astrodome, and my stepfather was staying home to watch the game. I literally paced my small side street for hours, imagining in my head, and I recall this as clearly as my last thought, precisely: Juan Samuel in the batter’s box with Harry Kalas introducing him… then decided to stay home with him. He had worked a long day, and we could hear the Mummers next Tuesday. I don’t remember what happened in the game, if we won or lost, but that really didn’t matter. I don’t even remember Harry Kalas introducing Juan Samuel. Much as the results are important to us, sharing in the game- from those earliest moments on- is what resonates. If being honest I’ll admit that there are moments I’m not in favor of having to rely on memories, though it’s the others in which felt alone you no longer feel as much you realize their value.

FAVORITES
Catch – Milt Thompson, v. San Diego Padres 1993
Hit – Pedro Feliz, v. Tampa, 2008 World Series Game Five
Vet Food – Helmet Sundae

How I’d imagine a novel about ZWR would start (only better)
If one were to tell him, as a child, that upon adulthood he would happen upon an idea so simple, yet anchored in no realm of normalcy, he would have smiled a moment or so and then moved on as if there were nothing further to be done of it. For we’re blessed in our youth with the indiscernible (and woefully short-lived as such) ability to find and carry out our expressions and experiences of joy. But as our present selves grown, it is the fleetingness that prevails. And so he there, with a sip, a nod- if onward into stupidity to tread, no merit of note to speak of- decided to tell of his wish to go to the zoo with Roy Halladay.

Why the zoo?
Zoos combine the more refined offerings of fun found in places such as carnivals or amusement piers (specifically: funnel cake) with the less pretentious educational aspects of those more intellectually stimulating- like museums. And penguins live there in the Northern Hemisphere.