Train Ambition

That train ride home was full of bristling emotions and words in the mental cloud. There might have been a moon out there if he had taken time to look above the dust on his brow.

Bitter ambitions pay odd dividends. No one knew that better than Wendy, and Burtom would never acknowledge that. His monograms were all so out of whack. BCA - Burtrom Carter Alspaugh.

El Veterinario para el Indio?

El Ventrilocuo

Patoruzú y el el Ladrón..de Niños!

More Wildlife News: Stop Feeding the Bears

Two things in so called" gay culture" that have made me want to run to the ex-gay conversion therapy with Ted Haggard are that Madonna creature (there is no excuse for 'it"; friends don't let friends listen to that Madonna creature) and "bears". The only thing more disgusting than the concept of bears is being around bears. The best way I can describe bears is that they act like a bunch of straight guys imitating lesbians aping straight male behavior. Although I'm attracted to a minor aspects of the look such as a certain amount of appropriately groomed facial and body hair, the overall package makes me want to start adopting 1950s screaming interior decorator behavior.

I recently got in trouble with a couple of friends who are self-identified bears who took me to a bear bar that I called The House of the Big Mamas. That didn't go over well. "How can you say such a thing, Junk Thief?!" "It's easy; I open my mouth and let the truth come out."

If I'm feeling fat an unattractive, the last thing I need is to hang out with a bunch of other fat and unattractive queens posturing as emotionally constipated straight guys with B.O. wearing flannel and pretending that they love the music of Steppenwolf. However, such places are a good wake up call to put down the milkshake and get back to the gym.

I would prefer using the name of my first crush as a moniker for any group that I would ever organize or seek out. So I was pleased to recently discover the Ministry of Sluggo which is run by a non-bear who is not exactly what I'd picture Sluggo to have grown up to be but will do just fine. I can even forgive him for having one song by that Madonna creature in his iPod since it's a throwaway novelty tune.

Of course, I don't think anyone could ever live up to what I thought Sluggo should be -- a slightly tough kid from the Bronx who would always be snuggly and sweet with me but could beat up anybody who insulted us or our BFF Nancy. But I'm not sure I like the idea of there ever being a group of Sluggos. I often wonder how Libertarians manage to get along since the very idea of coming together to organize a party counters their grounding ideals. Perhaps we'll someday have a Ron Paul Memorial Freeway, a patch of rock and tumbleweed strewn prairie that leads nowhere.

Interactive Wednesday: Many Happy Returns of the 1980s

As the good uncle, I took my niece to see most of the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake movies and events in the 1980s. Thus, I have an almost unhealthy knowledge of these Reagan era icons. Fortunately I have no family members of the age that would require gaining a similar knowledge of Hannah Montana. When will there be a Lala Utah? So I'm not sure how I feel about Ms. Cakes' recent makeover, and I'm certainly not happy about her dumping her cat Custard for a cell phone. I think the best indirect reference to her in a pop tune was this one.

Please weigh in.

The Miseducation of Little Audry

Okay, don't ever get me on that boxers or briefs questioning, and I really don't like cartoons all that much, but here's a near me-me post:

Mickey or Mighty Mouse - Mighty was much more out there and had shameless violence
Donald or Daffy Duck - Daffy by a long shot. He was easier to understand and such a New Yahk sass-meister. He reminded me of all my uncles
Disney or Loony Tunes - Loony had an attitude that always spoke to me more
Fritz the Cat or Krazy Kat - Never saw the former, but I really identified with Krazy and her pursuit of the mouse that reminded me of my love life.
Felix the Cat or Garfield - Felix
Care Bears or Strawberry Short Cake - South Park

Tea of Crimson, Distractions & Life

As someone with background as both a Unitarian and former journalist, I have a horrible, typically North American flaw of knowing a smidgen about millions of things and inability to focus in depth on anything (or anyone) for very long. Unless I get obsessed, and then I gnaw on it like a dog devouring a bone until there is nothing left.

That's been the case with my now six week hiatus with Junk Thief TV. I get crazy about making little opuses and then seem to get distracted. I really would like to get back at it in March post Ecuador, especially to return to the Junk-mation approach. Not surprisingly, I've heard no outcry over the fact that there have been so many weeks with no new episodes.

A real inspiration is the above Blood Tea and Red String that has such a simultaneously quaint and sinister feel to it. Has anyone seen the full movie? The music feels almost like Vashti Bunyon to me.

Mapping Junkyville

I can never get enough of cool and weird maps, and I could entertain myself for hours on end touring the various quadrants of the Simpsons' Springfield. So finding this searchable map was a nice treat on such a dreary, wet afternoon. Chez Guevera and Paté LaBelle are especially appealing to me, and I'm glad to see I could find a place called Junkyville.

Interactive Monday Assignment: Watch, Disconnect

Hello my dear ones. Watch, laugh, enjoy your egg nog and yule logs not blogs, come back soon!

Sluggo Sleepover

Most people recall their first big crush, even if it was on a movie star or fictional character. I certainly recall mine who serves as a role model to this day – Sluggo. The comic strip Nancy & Sluggo was one of several strips like Blondie, Dondi, Our Boarding House and Gasoline Alley that were set in a netherworld that certainly was not contemporary and seemed somewhat stuck in the 1930s. Most of the styles and characters in those strips gave me the willies with the exception of Sluggo.

There was something so sumptuously rounded about him, and there was that buzz cut head that certainly conjured up images of wanting to run barefoot through it. He usually covered it up with that little red tough guy cap, but when he sometimes let the world see that sensuous bristle noggin of his, my entire body quivered thinking of what it must have felt like to touch. Though I certainly was not like Rollo, Nancy's rich kid friend, I knew that Sluggo came from the wrong side of the tracks and wore wonderful tough guy clothes instead of mine that had gone through two cycles of fabric softener and a light sheen of spray starch administered by our housekeeper. Of course, in my worst nightmare I was Nancy -- a chubby little fuzz head in a too tight skirt and blouse with a pathetic little ribbon on top like a maraschino cherry on an unworthy ice cream dessert.

Besides owning a monkey, one of my recurring pre-middle school fantasies was to have Sluggo over for a sleepover so I could feel that crisp, sandpaper sensual scalp as we snuggled in my bed with my stuffed toys and favorite blankets. From the age of five to about 11, I loved having boys from school for sleepovers, and just when their breathing suggested that they had fallen asleep, I’d haultingly move my hand from my visitor’s stomach to the top of his head to see if he possessed the crown I was in search of. Only once did one wake and mumble, “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Oh, just trying to see if you have Sluggo-worthy hair.”

“Okay. But just don’t try any funny business.”

Alas, I never found a worthy Sluggo surrogate at my school. Most were too equally intrigued with watching Kukla, Fran & Ollie’s International Film Festival or making toll house cookies with me to convince me that they had that Sluggo edge.

Finally I decided that it was because I lived in the wrong part of the country. I sense that Sluggo was probably from Newark or south Boston, the perfect urban animal. When my grandparents took me to Manhattan every October beginning at age eight, I was always on the look out for some little Sluggo hanging out in an alley. I was prepared to be my own Fresh Air Fund of one to sponsor an inner city boy of my exact age, giving him all the great Midwest sunshine and unpolluted air that would strengthen his little lungs. Sadly, most of the other eight year olds attending How Now Dow Jones and George M! were equally overly intense grandsons with doting grandmothers straightening their blazers with faux crests as they meticulously read the “Who’s Who” in the cast from Playbill. “Look Grandma, she was in 70 Girls 70 that we saw last year!”

Looking back at my most passionately adult romantic pursuits, there was always a Sluggo factor in the process. Always a hope that he was from the wrong side of the tracks but would still be interested in me. Several of them wore caps and striped shirts and would look both ways before sneaking a kiss in public.

I once wrote a short story about what happened to the adult Nancy and Sluggo. They ended up in San Francisco in the mid-1980s where Nancy, whose round face and figure were always at the center of her self-esteem crisis, took a very low level job at the Bank of America. She commuted every day from her tiny, overpriced studio in Alameda. The plumbing leaked, and the ceiling was sagging, but she lacked the self-confidence to complain to her landlord.

After first sharing the apartment with her, Sluggo soon went through a series of increasingly wealthy boyfriends until he finally settled with a partner in Noe Valley where they had a quaint garden and a pair of Jack Russell terriers named Chucko and Mimi.

Nancy was driving home from work in her 12-year-old Honda Civic in October 1989 when the expanse to the Bay Bridge collapsed and she died instantly. Sluggo went into a deep depression, repeating: “I always told her to drive across the bridge with at least one window partially rolled down. That way you’ll have a chance to breaking out of the car from the bottom of the bay.”

I wonder if Sluggo is still out there? Maybe I’ll have dinner in Noe Valley tonight after all.