{"id":656,"date":"2005-02-22T21:45:08","date_gmt":"2005-02-23T02:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/2005\/02\/22\/various-sundry-part-seven\/"},"modified":"2007-11-26T16:37:40","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T20:37:40","slug":"various-sundry-part-seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/archives\/656","title":{"rendered":"Various & Sundry, part seven"},"content":{"rendered":"

— Surprising as it might seem, I never read H.S. Thompson. Maybe it was because I had a back-stabbing co-worker in the 70s who carried on a lot about how great a writer Thompson was. Either that or I just couldn’t get past all the Ralph Steadman<\/a>, which has been a bit of a mystery, since Steadman’s work was mildly influential for me at a certain point in my development as an illustrator (even though I found something fundamentally revolting about his style).\n<\/p>\n

— Brendan’s new Idiotcam archive<\/a> is positively super-dooper! Now I have only two major goals left in my life: building a home in the Knobs and making it into the exalted Plastic Mullet Series.\n<\/p>\n

— Something about Mombo’s tribute has really sparked some childhood memories. For some reason I got to thinking about one of the most brattish (perhaps the most brattish) thing I ever did as a child. I was pretty young, so my recollection is rather hazy. I don’t think it was my birthday, so it must have taken place at Christmas. I do remember that I’d been agitating for the only toy I desperately wanted—a firetruck. My parents must have been anticipating the delight that would certainly result from their big surprise. Or maybe it was my Uncle Don who was behind it.\n<\/p>\n

There it was! A bright red steel pedal-car-style fire engine complete with little wood ladders and a silver bell!\n<\/p>\n

I threw a fit. Weeping dramatically, I let it be known that I was totally disappointed. How could somebody have gotten it so utterly wrong? That’s not what I wanted. What I wanted was a little firetruck that I could take out to the sand pile and play with! It was a bitter tragedy. No, it was the end of the world!\n<\/p>\n

I don’t know how much longer it was before the replacement arrived, or what mixed emotions my tantrum must have triggered, but the Tonka fire engine eventually appeared, and it was a beauty. It even had a red hydrant that connected to the garden hose to supply a realistic fire-fighting stream. I have no recall as to what my reaction was. I hope I was appropriately grateful, but I may have just accepted it as merely just and overdue.\n<\/p>\n

Both toys are long gone. Did the pedal car end up at the home of a cousin? Whatever became of the little fire engine? Either toy would be a valuable collector’s item today…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— Surprising as it might seem, I never read H.S. Thompson. Maybe it was because I had a back-stabbing co-worker in the 70s who carried on a lot about how great a writer Thompson was. Either that or I just couldn’t get past all the Ralph Steadman, which has been a bit of a mystery, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,33,35,18,69,37,16,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}