Cow Art

Title: Framed Picture of a Cow
Date: Unknown
Category: Sweet Ass Art
Current Status: Prominently displayed in my backyard tool shed

Look out Leonardo! Move over Monet! Piss off Picasso! Ya'll have been Art Slapped by this fine piece of homey bovine goodness.
Cows rock... I mean, let's face it... they are a goofy animal. They produce tasty milk and tasty meat and other than that, they just kinda stand around looking bored. And yet, there is something truly awesome about cows. Perhaps it was Gary Larson's use of these mammals that injected their image with some badassedness... who knows.
Maybe it was that stupid "It's a Cow Christmas" tape, but for whatever reason, Ray and I liked cows. Not as much as ducks, of course, but they were a close second. I have a bunch of cow junk... a cookie jar, a terracotta shelf decoration, a bandanna... at one point I even had a small stuffed toy cow (named "Cow") that would "moo" three times if you squeezed it. Cow used to hang out with me in High School. Once, during an Academic Decathlon training session led by the infamous Mr. Danielson, that bum Will Chesser reached over and squeezed Cow and so everybody in the room looked at me like I was a freak. Jerk.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where this came from, but I believe it was yet another "gift" from Ray for our annual "Terrible Gift Exchange" for Christmas. It was really more of a competition than a meaningful gift swap. See who could get the other the most useless stuff for $10. Quantity was obviously more important than quality.

Take a look at the back...

doesn't that just scream "masterpiece"?!!? I mean, I bet Rembrandt never had the brilliant idea to paint on cardboard and add a bar code to make selling his work easier. Loser.

Bela Lugosi vs Count Chocula

Title: Special Edition Count Chocula Box
Date: 1987?
Category: Cereal Box
Current Status: Sucking

What the hell?!?!? Bauhaus was wrong... Bela Lugosi lives and he's terrorizing cartoon cereal mascots.

I have some vague memory of the General mills Monster cereals doing this Universal Monster tie-in... Frankenberry was visited by Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster as well. At any rate, back in the days when I could somehow manage to eat bowls of these types of cereals without my teeth hurting from all the sugar, I used to dig Chocula (and sometimes Frankenberry... occasionally Yummy Mummy... but fuck Booberry... that was nasty).
I assume I thought the box was pretty cool, since I cut the front off and saved it, although I'm not sure for what purpose I did so. There are no obvious push pin or staple holes indicating that it was part of my awesome bedroom wall decorations, so presumably, this just went intro one of my infamous "save" boxes... boxes that served only to hold treasured crap like this and stored in the attic.

I like this picture though. It's kinda funny. I mean, seriously Count Chocula, what are you afraid of? I'm fairly certain that neither Bela Lugosi nor the real Dracula (or any vampire) would actually attempt to suck whatever bizarre sugary ooze no doubt fills your freakish body. For that matter, Lugosi's image seems to have a bit of Alfred E. Neuman in it. He looks less mysterious and scary and more amused at the goofy brown guy running away.

Interestingly, there are two versions of this cereal box, one of which caused controversy. Apparently the original version had Bela wearing some pointy star that some thought was a Star of David (although others claimed it was ACTUALLY the Maltese Cross from the Order of the Thelemic Knights or the Order of Saint John) and people complained. So they basically airbrushed the star out for later production runs. Of course, now the Star box is collectible, sometimes going for a few hundred bucks. (More about this story here)

My First Book

Title: My First Story

Date: Early 80's

Category: Literature

Current status: Currently looking for a publisher and/or movie deal



This was my first attempt at writing a book. Seriously. I can tell you the EXACT circumstances that brought this masterpiece to light.



In 1982, The Jedi Master's Quizbook was published. The author was an 11-year-old kid named Rusty Miller. I had acquired the book somehow (I was 7, so who knows how I got it) and decided that if this goofy kid could write a book (or at least, compile a bunch of trivia questions into a book), the surely I could write a book.



Having never written a book before, I was clueless as to how to go about doing it. Obviously. I didn't sketch out a plot, I didn't concern myself with any sort of planning for characters, settings, or what the story was even supposed to be about. And, since I was 7, I asked my dad to type it as I dictated to him.



I remember clearly, pacing the kitchen while my dad sat at the breakfast table typing whatever nonsense came out of my mouth. I also remember him getting frustrated as I spent way to long trying to decide to whom I wanted to dedicate the book. He wisely suggested that it could wait until later and that I should actually write the story first.



I think he got pretty tired of being my secretary and so I know I typed some of this myself. I'm actually not sure what he typed and what I typed... for that matter, I can't actually tell whether he started typing or if I started typing. Doesn't really matter, I suppose, since it all looks like it was typed by 7 year old.

As for the story itself... well... crap... it starts off as some sort of poorly conceived tale of an incredibly boring alien (Fred) on another planet. The economy on this planet is apparently reliant on sea shells that anybody can go pick up on the shore. Except that they also eat the clam shells. It must be some primitive bartering system. Not sure. They apparently have modern technology similar to Earth, but they haven't developed a monetary system that makes any sense.

The story, at first, seems to loosely revolve around Fred needing to get clam shells to pay for damaged he caused by turning over a "dirt dumper" in the Mayor's yard. Mostly, it's just dull details about the boring events of Fred's day.

I guess I got bored with Fred too because on page 4 (right after the highly ridiculous capture of a dangerous crook by Fred), the story focuses on Fred's kids, Jack & Krissy. I'm not sure if the names were inspired by 3's Company or (more likely) they are based on me and my sister. Jack & Krissy are just as boring as their father and not even the introduction of a baby can make this story all that interesting.

Really though, there may actually be two reasons to read this 8 page literary triumph:

1) It's so unbelievably boring and ridiculous that you have to actually read it to believe that it is so boring and ridiculous and

2) I think there must be some actual family problems poking around in this thing that were bothering me when I wrote this. I'm sure psychologists would have a field day.

If you REALLY want to find out how this horrible thing ends, check out the full 8 page Masterpiece Here.