How this came about:
There's a sort of black hole for celebrity gossip of the '00s that never made it into the canonized online world. One of these things is THE most interesting tidbit of a Vh1 Behind the Music episode on Blues Traveler where lead singer John Popper admitted that one of the reasons he decided to lose weight was that he was so heavy he would get exhausted during masturbation and have to stop before he finished.
That was the nugget that everyone talked about when they talked about Blues Traveler for years; it was like the Marilyn Manson rib removal rumor, but true. Everyone loves Blues Traveler! I love that video of Emma Stone lip-synching their 1994 hit "Hook" on The Tonight Show recently! Those hits are great! It's all fun!
But the only mention of it online seems to be on an outdated Blues Traveler fan mesageboard. Chatting about it, I realized some of my younger colleagues had never even heard this salacious '90s factoid.
So I tweeted about it:
Surprisingly little information on the internet regarding the legend that John Popper was too obese to masturbate.
Immediately, someone warned me that John Popper does name searches on Twitter:
@fart @katienotopoulos dude def runs twitter searches on the regular too, speaking from experience
And sure enough, later that night, he popped up with a pretty horny response:
@karengeier @katienotopoulos I really am getting turned on by U girls researching the subject so "thoroughly" though... ;)
Someone else joined in and said a mean thing about Popper's weight, which really isn't cool. Make fun of him for being thirsty, make fun of him for being in a harmonica band or for getting arrested for gun possession. Not his weight.
@mynameisaverb @karengeier @katienotopoulos nope&neither was the man who impregnated Ur mom,he just lived on an actual subway #IamnotUrdaddy
At some point, I think Popper got confused about who was antagonizing him and lashed out at Karen, who had replied with something neutral and was now stuck in the troll canoe. Things only went downhill from here.
Here is a small taste of what his timeline looked like today. This went on for hours:
Moral of the story: Never tweet about Blues Traveler. In fact, never tweet. This is awful.
Here's the video for "Run Around," which has that good handstamp-licking trick. Idk. Everyone just be nice.
