5a & 5b ~ JACK Ass & DON Key

I must apologize.  It was not my intention at 13 (that I’m aware of) that the streamers and attached balloon knots would resemble breasts–BREASTS hanging from the ceiling of this innocent child’s birthday party.  And if you did not think of such image yourself while looking at this, I apologize now, as a 36-year-old, for bringing that up.  I’m so not even a breast guy myself.  Anyway.  That’s what they look like.  And the balloons themselves, don’t get me started.  While on the subject of the “artistic” treatment of my brilliant word play, those bows kinda look like Muppet hands reaching out of the boxes to grab what ever child holds it in his lap.  That would be a frightening gift!  And I don’t know, they look more like Christmas presents than birthday presents, even in black and white.

I think I learned how to draw fingers wrapped around an object in holding it from my bff CR.  He was a much better drawer than I.  I’m sure he still is.  Maybe I’ll share the birthday card he drew me with a dragon slayer on it when we were 8 or 9.  Or the Robert Smith portrait he drew for me with pastels in high school.

That child’s arm is freakishly long.  Where is his elbow?  Maybe he should have been the real subject of this card!

These children kinda suck at this game.  Do you think that outstretched freakish arm will be the winner?  Such drama and kinetic energy I created in my little drawing!  It’s a shame that I didn’t make a follow up card with a child dropping a clothespin (or something more sinister) into a Kid’s milk bottle shaped head (or worse, an actual milk jug with a face on it–as the original GPK’s got older, the art often relied on faces drawn on inanimate objects vs representing the actual whole kid.  This bugged me as seeming not in the right spirit or as something too easy.  Though I’m definitely guilty of doing it here. And I’m over it now.)

JACK is the vocal one of these brothers. Maybe because he looks sadder.  DON just looks too spooked to let anything out.  Poor guy.

These two have me philosophizing about the life we are born into and what makes us live up to our potential.  I guess I covered that a bit with the previous two Kids, but my brain is coming at it from a different angle.  Maybe that’s what all this was about!  Was it all a way of crying out Well, I may have my problems, but at least I’m not a child’s party game celebrating animal cruelty!  So, like we have JACK and DON, born into this world as illustrated donkeys on a poster.  While I did not give their poster house a setting–like a meadow or a stable–perhaps there is one, and they could be safe, folded in their box, tail-less and free frolicking about and enjoying life. But if they just do that all day, they haven’t lived up to their potential–to their purpose.  I mean, if you were born a donkey with no tail, wouldn’t you pursue the path in front of you to attain one?  Might that not be a major goal?  Or if all the donkeys in your world have no tail, then your ignorance is blissful.

And then this all makes me think of the obstacles in front of us to attain our goals.  The strength we must have to endure the hardships brought on by others and the institutions we’ve created as humankind.  It’s rather inspiring.  Hey, if DON and JACK have to suffer an 8-year-old’s dizzy pin pushing to achieve their tail, then maybe I too–and you too–can suffer and survive the slings and arrows of an artists life to get what I want.

Thanks, guys!

Another train of thought has to do with the class system, ethnic cleansing, and bondage.  But that’s not nearly as fun, right?  Maybe these guys are related to Eeyore.

Related Articles

• Donkey Wednesday: Eyore Loses a Tail (sixbucksamonkey.wordpress.com)

4a & 4b ~ Foot PAUL & Kicked RICK

Poor Paul and Rick.  Twin brothers who should have been more specific when, while drowning in shark infested waters somewhere off the coast of an island off of South Africa (and it’s none of your business what they were doing there in the first place), they both wished to be reincarnated as “someone surrounded by a stadium full of screaming fans.”  They were thinking more along the lines being the next Bon Jovi or the Rolling Stones.  Instead, when they found themselves together again in a crate of footballs bound for the NFL, they were seriously like WTF.

They rallied their crate mates, not sure if any of them had previous human existence, and gave a chilling Henry V-Band of Brothers type speech as they prepared for battle.  Not all of them would make it, but they’d make the most of it darn it.  Still, as they were tossed and kicked about in a Lions vs. Bears game, they confided in each other their wish that if they were going to come back as sports equipment, the powers that be could’ve chosen soccer balls instead.  Where the beer is better and apparently there’s more sex and drama like in Footballers’ Wives.

Oh well.

 

 

QUESTION: What do YOU want to be reincarnated as?  Be specific!

Update

Hey Fans!  (All 10 0f you)  And of course anyone who stumbles across this.  Didn’t quite mean to let things lapse this long.  But many things going on.  Hope to get another post soon.  The next Kid is football related, so maybe I can’t QUITE get motivated.  But we’ll get there.

Yours in the Trash,

Michael

3a & 3b ~ MICK Alobe & AL Cohol

This is what it means to be drunk to a fairly innocent 13-year-old, who learned from various 80′s teen movies (kegger!), the occasional bum wondering the streets of downtown Detroit, and of course, Dumbo—which my little brothers watched about 87 times a day.  Something to reach for, right?  I mean, the quasi-break dancing moves, the square mouth, the spiral eyes and words.  I like how AL seems to be happier about it all than MICK (who looks more like WTF?!) Hilarious stuff!

Just what are they saying…?  Hey, why don’t YOU tell me!  Leave a comment.

We weren’t Michelob people (but the brand makes for an awesome name, yo!), but cans of Miller High Life and Budweiser were always on hand for family gatherings.  Grandpa (one grandpa partook, one did not) would give me sips out of his can.  I probably didn’t like it, but thought it cool.  Once, as a small child told to go get him a beer, I asked him, “Are you an alcoholic?” Commence awkward moment of cracking open skeleton-filled closet.  I’d heard the word from an episode of Facts of Life or Archie Bunker’s Place.

And we moved on from there.

Speaking of grandpas, while looking up YouTube clips (which I think will be a nice addition to our posts here), I found this drunken clip from Private Snafu.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen these before!  I mean, maybe, but I don’t think so.  Given my WWII obsession, I may have to watch all of them.

In 10th grade, I was over at my friend CMT’s house and we each took a swig from his mom’s bottle of Jack Daniels.  I spit it out.  Later, I asked my friend CR if he’d ever had JD.  Later still, in the car after the mall with my mom driving, he asked me what I’d meant by “Did you ever try JD?”  Commence glaring menacingly.  The closest I got to really drinking in high school was via fictional personas in first person poems.

As a college theatre major in the early-mid ’90′s, drinking was pretty much unavoidable.  Once I discovered Strawberry Hill Boone’s Farm and Honey Brown beer (purchased by myself or a friend almost exclusively at Munchie & Dairy Marts in Kalamazoo, Michigan), it was all over.  I will not post photos (or the video!) of my 21st birthday.

I’ve since relatively calmed down more or less from there.

2a & 2b ~ MAXWELL House & DEE Caf

How about a nice steaming hot cup of BRAINS for breakfast?!  Straight from the noggin of this kettle-headed Kid and into your cup oddly enough placed behind him if you believe the rules of perspective.

Sounds delightful.

Most 13-year-old boys would probably prefer brains over coffee.  But before then, I watched the black gold of my mother’s morning savior drip its way into and climb up the sides of her white-numbered Mr. Coffee pot, each number hit a goal accomplished. I cheered it on standing excitable on a pulled-over kitchen chair.

An open can of Maxwell House is a sandbox waiting to be dug with its little included plastic scoop.

Mom let me drink the cold remains of her coffee as a kid.  This fact made it into a play of mine, which she saw a few months before she left this earth.  It was only one of several things that made her cry about the play that night.

You can never play the “It’s fiction” card with your mother.

Officially, coffee drinking began before my post-high school graduation all-night party.  With the exception of a several month hiatus in late 1998 due to headaches and hypochondria induced noises, I haven’t stopped.  Our coffee grinder’s engine is making its own hypochondria induced noises.  It may blow one of these days but we have backup.

Dee, the name, I knew from the handful of Garbage Pail Kids with that name.  And of course Dee from What’s Happening! I don’t get decaf.  I mean I get it, but I still don’t get it.  Decaf is for late night desert or a wedding where you don’t want to kill the alcohol.

Be extra careful to freshen the decaf pot–it can sit an entire shift.

QUESTION: What childhood activities have lead to a current socially non- or accepted addiction?

1a & 1b ~ ARON Dragon & ROLLY Coaster

We begin.

Not the best art work.  I promise it gets better.  So does my spelling.

So, when I was 10, my dad took my brother and I to King’s Island in Ohio.  There was a roller coaster there that was basically a downward hill, a loop, and an upward hill.  Done.  I was skeptical about their insistence that it would be fun.  Somehow we all passed the height requirement.

We went down the hill.  We went upside down in a loop.  We went up the hill.  I hate you guys.  Glad that’s over.

But wait.

We start going again.  Backwards.  Down the hill.  Upside down and BACKWARDS in the loop.  Up the hill to where we begun.  I REALLY hate you guys!

Hitting and cursing were involved.

But I’m not dead.  And we rode the Beast Junior several times later that evening.

On my 8th grade field trip to Cedar Point (also in Ohio), we rode the Iron Dragon about 15 times in a row while killing time before we had to be back on the bus.  That was awesome.

QUESTION: What was the scariest friggin’ thing YOUR family has made you do?