When I was seven, long before the brutal death of suffix -s at the hands of a lecherous, pre-teen she-gang, one of my primary concerns in life was the competitive 3rd grade sport of sticker collecting.
While most of the girls I knew had slick, store-bought sticker books, I had a cast-off photo album. Unlike the specifically designed, waxed vinyl pages that my friends had, the hyper-grip of my photo album made for a horrifically incompatible and ruinous surface for my collection. It was a total piece of shit. Once I put a sticker down, it stayed down.
The stickers below, for example, are proof of what would happen if I tried otherwise:
Why Beefeater Garfield and an Easter Egg were privileged enough to grace the front cover, however, I will never know.
Onwards.
The inside cover:
As far as I was concerned, anything cool in the world— L.A. Lights, Pop-Tarts, backwards turned baseball caps and other nonverbal gestures of sass, etc.,—came out of America. Anything European—clogs, bonnets, cheese, my parents— was for nerds. Europe didn't get it. Europeans didn't go around saying cowabunga. They didn't believe in cheeseburgers. They didn't have attitude.
Look at the dog I drew there. He's an American. I can tell because 1) he is posing between two American flags raised triumphantly on a hillside and 2) he looks cool and nonchalant, as evidenced by his mischievous smirk. Appearing cool and nonchalant, after all, were traits I considered exclusively American.
At one point there may have also been twin cats momentously climbing up the flag poles but it appears that, presumably because they were neither cool nor nonchalant enough to be American, they were savagely erased.
Moving along.
Page One and Two:
My obsession with America could only be eclipsed by my obsession with dogs:
Just as I dealt with other shortcomings in life, like not being American, or the white, medical eye patch I was given to wear for a woeful Halloween pirate costume one year*, so I dealt with the disappointment of my total piece of shit photo album. By meticulously numbering my stickers, (e.g. #23, "small, boring heart") I made my collection look confident and well-organized. In actuality, this was only done to hide the tragic irreversibility that my tyrannically adhesive pages enforced.
Page Three:
Page Three is primarily made up of seasonally themed/reward stickers I earned for schoolwork, although I'm not sure I understand some of the praise. Such as:
1) Lincoln marveling at the love in his hat:
2) A skunk preparing to take liberties with a boot:
3) Three fish simultaneously greeting one another. (If I saw this happen in real life, I would probably not remark "VERY NICE.")
4) A vaguely sinister, Prince-themed Christmas mouse creeping around my house wearing mod boots:
Speaking of mod accessories...
Whoa. Tom definitely does not own a Vespa. No way. Also, I'm pretty sure Tom and Jerry are mostly into trying to destroy each other with extreme violence, like putting each others' tails into waffle irons, crushing each others' heads in doors, and/or slicing each other in half. So I don't think that Tom would be all cool with Jerry—now inexplicably a glovelet wearing art fag—just cruising by on a skateboard with his attaché and showing off with a jaunty, ta-dahhh wave.
Since when do enemies go surfing together?! Where did Tom find board shorts two-tone matched to his own fur scheme? And why is he suggestively dangling his sunglasses out of his mouth and looking at me like that?
And I object to cats owning jam boxes! And heel-clicking! And flesh-colored visors! Enemies do not strut down coast lines together.
Well shit, maybe it's because they're not enemies after all. Because if there's one way for enemies to bury the hatchet, it's to get totally wasted together. Which is obviously what's going on here. Tom's all eyes-rolling-in-the-back-of-his-head, got-his-hippie-sandals-and-casual-shirt-on stoned, the sun is an overtly symbolic kite high up in the sky or else a surrealist tacked-on drawing, and Jerry is completely passed out with his hands down his pants, if not, in his inebriated state, just oblivious to the laws of social propriety and casually touching himself in public. These guys are clearly shit-housed. And whatever they're on, they probably got it from this guy:
Page Four:
I call bullshit on this entire page. Seriously.
#132: "3 eggs nestled in grass."
#143-146: "Arbitrary patterns."
#161-162: "Family Chicken Portraits."
What a bunch of loser stickers. Did I seriously think that anyone, with their fancy professional sticker books, would be willing to trade something for these? Man.
Page 5:
Booooorrriiinnngggg. Yeah, not a whole lot going on here. Oh, except for this Christmas Shopping Duck Slut:
Next time: Look out for more slutz, plus babies, the inevitable Lisa Frank, demented food items and more!!
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