Okay, so this is one I actually kind of remember from when I was little - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I don't know who bought it for him, but I was really happy to find it on the kid's bookshelf. I'm pretty sure it was one I liked a lot as a kid, I remember because it had a wacky plot. Of course, now I'm older, and I've got a much better grip of exactly how fucking weird this book really is. It's not creepy weird, it's just… I dunno, trippy I guess. Like that Judi Barrett gal might've been on some kind of herbal supplement when she wrote it, if you get my drift. Who comes up with an idea like this while they're sober? She was probably in a state where she was HOPING food would fall from the sky to save her a run to Taco Bell.
 So the story begins with two kids, a mom, and a grandpa doing the breakfast thing on a Saturday morning. Grandpa's flipping some pancakes for the grandkids, which makes me sad because I bet he works at McDonalds during the week. Old guy shouldn't have to do that shit on his day off. The family pets run though, causing gramps to flip a pancake across the room to land on the boy's head. Thankfully, the pancake looks like it's cooked, sparing poor Henry the agony of batter burns (which I've experienced from cooking in my bathrobe, and those bitches can hurt). Anyhow, no damage done, everyone laughs it up, but that evening it inspires Grandpa to tell the "best tall-tale bedtime story he'd ever told." Personally, I find that a bit of a stretch. If it was the best, I really think Disney would've made some kind of movie about it, even if it was only direct-to-video.
The story is about the town of - get this - Chewandswallow. Do you know how hard it is to read this book when every time you have to say "Chewandswallow" you have the urge to do a "Butthead" imitation? Now the deal with Chewandswallow is that there's no farms, no supermarkets… the people get their food because it falls from the sky. Yeah, the food is the weather. And the weather happens three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it's always the right food for the right meal. Huh? Never mind the whole "food" issue, since when is weather that accurate? Chewandswallow sure as hell ain't in Ohio now, is it?
The good people of Chewandswallow think this is perfectly normal, and gather their meals from the weather as a habit. It always hits them with the appropriate food for each meal, and it also "rains" beverages like orange juice. The weathermen on TV try to predict what the food will be the next day, and they all walk around carrying plates and glasses when they know it's time for food. You know, I've got to wonder about the religious beliefs of your basic Chewandswallow resident. At 10:30 every Sunday, does the sky suddenly open up with bread and wine? I used to be Catholic, and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly with the church. They're kind of funny about Jesus, and I don't think that's what it meant when it said he would return from the sky.
Anyhow, one day, the weather turns against the town. It starts giving them too much food, and the wrong kinds of food, and food that wrecks stuff. Like huge-ass pancakes that cover the school, spaghetti that floods the streets, and pea soup fog - I think you get the idea. The people are forced to seek shelter against the nasty and unpredictable weather (a "tomato tornado" and huge donuts rolling down the street like a Rosie O'Donnell one-woman parade). Eventually the residents all decide to pack it in and move away. So they build giant rafts out of (of course) bread and peanut butter and take to the sea.
Eventually they come to a land where food doesn't fall from the sky; it's "normal" weather. The citizens of a small coastal town take them in, I guess without needing answers to questions like "Hey, isn’t your boat a forty foot PBJ sandwich? That's some pretty messed up shit, you know." And they all live happily ever after. Grandpa's story is a fun tale with no apparent point, which always makes for the best stories.
The next morning, the kids wake up and go sledding with Grandpa, and as they look up the hill, they think the rising sun looks like melting butter on the mound of new snow. I guess that's the best way you COULD end a book like this, but Judi probably was just jonesin' for some mashed potatoes. Maybe she was trying to teach the kids to use their imagination or something. I don't really understand it myself, but then again I'm just a guy that wishes it would rain beer every now and then, like when I'm out mowing the lawn.
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