I love this song, but I hadn’t seen this video until now. OMG this is a virtual smorgasbord or retro nostalgia- at least for me. My grandparents had that same amber glass post lamp! My uncle had that couch! My dad’s popcorn popper! The popped polo shirt collar! The “Logan’s Run” tunics! Banana seats! Combined with the 80s synth sound and the atomic age lyrics, this is pure Reagan-era bliss.

Pete (and his shirt) is my new hero. I can’t tell if this guy is all kinds of awesome or all kinds of wrong, but I’m buying it either way. I think as a kid I would have loved him. Kids love the absurd, and Pete seems to get that. BUT THAT DOESN’T SPARE HIM FROM THE ACID TONGUE OF THE EVILCUPCAKED ONE! Shall we begin?

As I was searching for other camp songs as performed by Pete (and his shirt), I came across this incredibly strange video of Pete (sans his shirt and dressed like he’s about to perform some occult ceremony) and some other guy in bunny ears who looks like he plays the roll of Booger* in Pete’s gang (other members possibly being named things like Gadget, Tiny, Pete’s Shirt, and Pony Boy) singing a song about shark attacks.

Keep the quirk coming, Pete.

*I kid Mr. Bunny Ears, your hygiene appears to MUCH better than Boogers. However, my husband may have to sue you for stealing his trademark facial hair pattern!

Why is this song here? Personal trauma. As a kid, I somehow misheard these lyrics as being “My Body”. The only reason I could see a person’s body would be lying all over the place would be if it was a DEAD body. “Bring back my body to me” sounded like the wail of a non-corporeal wraith, trapped between worlds and yearning for a return to its physical self. I seriously thought this was what the song was about, until I was in my tweens and someone overheard me singing it. As if puberty wasn’t embarrassing enough.

So, Pete the Camp and Experiential Education Enthusiast, what does your shirt think of all this?

Bopping field mice on the head? Bunny Foo Foo is a JERK! And what the heck is a goon? For some reason, I always pictured a goon as some sort of malevolent goblin. How is that going to improve the situation? Gee, thanks, Good Fairy, for unleashing a monstrous rabbit-demon hybrid with head crushing proclivities on the world!

Sing us out, Pete the Camp and Experiential Education Enthusiast (and his shirt)!

Ah, the gross-out song. This song still makes me gag a little. No one is sure of its origins, or why someone decided to immortalize a decaying rodent around the campfire, but millions of kids want to thank that person for giving them a foul weapon against their fussy kid sister.

There is a scene in the book “The Dead Zone”, where, as a child, the protagonist accidentally puts his hand into the remains of a putrid, dead gopher. If I remember correctly, the passage even quotes this song.

Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat
Dirty little birdie feet.
Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,
And me without my spoon.

This guy is Pete. According to his YouTube profile, Pete is a “camp and experiential education enthusiast”. You will be seeing more of Pete and his shirt in the future.

But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just couldn’t stay away.

This sick little ditty was sung in playgrounds and music classes ’round the world. It’s about the attempts of a man to brutally murder a house pet, who is apparently a zombie or T-1000 cyborg. Not sure who to root for in this story.

Bless the Canadians. They made a cartoon out of this fluffy little snuff tale.