Here is the other post I wanted to share with you from my short lived 2.0 version.  That is pretty much all that the site was good for.  As you can see this article was written when I was living in Richmond and going to NYC all the time… now it is the other way around.  In fact, I am going to Richmond tomorrow for a Gaskets show.  If you live there, you should come to the Canal Club tomorrow night.  Right Right, on to the pennies.

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A few months ago on a trip to NYC from Richmond, VA I stopped off at one of the two rest stops in Maryland along 95. The northern most rest stop is called the Chesapeake House. This wonderful place is full of not only wonder but also over priced food, key chains and penny crushing machines. For those of you not familiar with said machines, they are these boxes that if you put in two quarters and a penny, they will take the penny and squish it for you. They give you four options for the image they stamp on the flattened penny. Usually these range from tourist locations (Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument), local flavor (State bird, local sports team), to the completely unrelated (bible quotes, dinosaurs). Anyway, I was looking for interesting pennies for a friend of mine who collects these things, when I came upon a machine that just blew my mind. The options were 1. Maryland State Flower, 2. Maryland Crab, 3. Baltimore Orioles Baseball, 4. Frank Zappa. Yeah, that’s right. Frank Zappa. Evidently, Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, MD. (I always thought he was from CA.) Someone, I can’t imagine who, but someone thought it would be a great idea to put him on a penny. Now, I have to mention that I have never been much of a Frank Zappa fan. In fact, I can not name a single Zappa song. That being said, I was so amazed at the god damned hi-larity of this penny that I had to get one.

A few weeks later I was over at my friend Dylan’s house. His girlfriend (who is also a friend and also lives in this aforementioned house) had just received a box of records from her uncle. We were going through these records when I came across the T-Rex album, Electric Warrior (8 out of 10). For some reason they did not want to part with it, despite not being T-Rex fans. I offered to buy it but they refused. Anyway, we kept looking through the records when Dylan said “I wish there were some Zappa records in here.” I knew that was my chance… I quickly pulled out my trusty Zappa penny and traded it to him for the record. Everyone was happy but I was once again Zappaless.

So, last weekend I was driving to NYC again and I happened to stop in the same rest stop to eat some Roy Rogers fried chicken (Roy’s gets a 7 out of 10, but fried chicken gets a 17 out of 10 because fried chicken is the greatest food ever conceived.) So when I realized I was at the Zappa penny stop I quickly emptied my pockets of change and left that stop with not one, not three, but 5 Zappa pennies. I am now, as they say on the street, Zappa rich. Next time I go to NYC I am going to bring a quarter roll and a bunch of nice shiny pennies. I want to have 50 of these things or something so that when ever I want something I can try to barter for it with Zappa pennies. It is pretty clear to me that these pennies are worth far more than 51 cents and I am going to corner the market.

Final Score: I give the Zappa penny a 5 Zappa Penny score out of a Zappa Nickel.

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