| [from the desk of Stickboy]
Bonasera! It’s winter in New York, and my thoughts turn to failed romance. Valentine’s Day approaches, and my heart, as always on my sleeve, is polished and prepped for a snowy month of romance. we hope. al gore be damned, there will be snow. an inconvenient truth? had gore ascended to the white house in 2000, our debacle in iraq, our torture, pillage, desecration, bombardment…nothing more than a page in paul wolfowitz’s neocon scrapbook, an attachment to his resume, a mash note sealed inside an envelope in Kissinger’s inbox. as always, I digress. I’m writing to invite you to read my new strip, “Dated a Clown”, available now, in HTML and as a PDF: http://www.oliosonline.org/ - then click on Pretty Sure and disfrute! just about all of my strips are archived here. t-shirts, mugs and mouse pads? you need a “Failure Monthly” mug, don’t you? http://www.cafepress.com/buy/stickboy hill is here, obama is exploring, Edwards has returned, but who cares? Kerry has decided not to run; thus we are freed, perhaps forever, from one of the least compelling candidates to ever stand at a podium. for the republicans it’s McCain, the pin-up POW, and perhaps Giuliani, who, unlike Bush and Rummy, shows up for funerals. will it be Hill and Obama vs. McCain and Giuliani? McCain and Lieberman? Whatever happens, our corporate masters will be pleased. One of history’s most senseless wars will not go gentle into that good desert night. The big news, however, is a quarter of a billion dollars for David beckham, as promised by the LA Galaxy, already the most expensive failure in the history of soccer, and Beckham is still in Spain. it won’t work, fellas – give it up. let’s try this analogy: Vietnam is to Iraq what the NASL is to Major League Soccer. you don’t need an oracle here. I hear the Beckhams are thrilled about coming to America – they’re fed up with Madrid. They want to unpack in Beverly Hills and never hear another word of Spanish as long as they live. Beckham’s first action film is already in development. It’s about a former English world cup soccer player who travels to Darfur with Jennifer Aniston, who works for UNICEF. they fall in love while he organizes Sudan’s first youth World Cup team, comprised entirely of rehabilitated child Janjaweed soldiers; Vince Vaughn will play the cynical but lovable chain-smoking helicopter pilot who doesn’t want to get involved but ends up flying mission after mission to rescue Sudanese villagers and whisk them away to the splendor of UN refugee camps across the border in Chad. the song over the end credits will be a remix of Victoria Beckham’s version of the Buffalo Springfield classic, “For What It’s Worth”. tabloid romances aside, I don’t know that Valentine’s day can stand on its own as a holiday – it’s too flimsy, requires reservations, falls on too many weekdays…we need to combine it with another holiday, something to give it real heft. mother’s day? too many oedipal issues. Halloween? too easy, and they’ve already got bondage and fetish outfits in the windows at Ricky’s NYC. what about Yom Kippur? that’s right, the day of atonement. Jews don’t confess in a box to a priest – we stand up in synagogue and lightly pound our chests while reciting a list of sins. for me, given my nefarious, slaverous existence, I don’t find this list specific enough. also, in the past decade I’ve only attended synagogue three times, twice for family deaths, once for a bar mitzvah (stoned out of my bloody mind). so a valentine’s day of atonement? after a bistro dinner, a little Nat King Cole, a few glasses of Moet Chandon, after you slip out of your boxers and peel open a Durex studded, it is time to whisper in your beloved’s ear: “honey, I’m an atheist, and I was treated for genital warts in 1993. I haven’t had an outbreak since, but I’ll always carry the virus. I have a pamphlet I want you to read…” I want to confess, but once I get started I won’t be able to stop. Also, once my unseemly history of drug use, therapy and premature ejaculation is available on the Internet, my presidential aspirations will be immolated in their entirety, tapped out on a dorm room coffee table like marijuana ashes. my sins are many and I love them dearly. I am creepy to the bone. I love Asian porn sites, shoes in bed, dirty talk, dunkin donuts…I’ve had homosexual urges, and once, while staying at my in-laws, my wife’s dog licked my arm for almost 6 minutes and I must admit I was aroused. I met a 60 year-old harpist at a wedding in Sausalito and bought her CD in the hope that she might date me (she was crazy hot, didn’t look a day over 50). I once got drunk and manhandled Betty boop at a staff party, chased her down a hallway with my fly open…and many of you know about the Josie and the Pussycats lawsuit, which was finally settled out of court in 2001. my final confession for Yom valentine’s day Kippur? I want to sleep with 4 of the 5 spice girls, in this order: posh I know, I know – how could I leave Joe Lieberman Spice off this list? and what does this hierarchy say about me? Is it a diagnostic tool? I want to sleep with the pussycat dolls, all of ‘em, but there’s a generational issue here, and I’m not very hip hop. and they seem kind of mean. Don’t they? Don’t they? “That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be”. Take it from the Stick, man on dog isn’t so bad – it beats US on Iraq any day. look for new strips, new merchandise and a candid interview with yours truly, all coming your way between now and Passover! Sit home and wait. Happy Valentine’s Day! j’taime, |