The Artist Formerly Known As.

A few years before my mother passed away, she gave us the scrapbooks she had kept when we were kids. They were full of our artwork and schoolwork from when we were in Kindergarten through 6th grade. Just about everything that went up on the refrigerator ended up in this book. I sorted through it the other night and picked out a few of my favorites. I was apparently big on drawing pictures of my family.

I believe I can say with almost 100% certainty that the teacher forced us to do this.

I say this for two reasons. One -- as I've mentioned before -- my preferred subjects in 1st grade were usually vaguely humanoid female monsters with saggy tits and hoop earrings. Two, judging by the quality of my work, I think we're looking at nothing but blatant coercion here.

Here's the first known portrait of The Snitch and Houdini:



As you can see, The Snitch was an extremely happy kid, even though he had clover hands and no genitalia. Houdini was less happy because in addition to the same hand/crotch problem, he suffered the misfortune of having been born with no mouth or nose and a pair of floppy penis ears. It's tough to be a happy kid when you're walking around with penis ears. Especially when you're in a crowd of people and you hear your favorite song.

From my mother's detailed notes, this next picture is apparently a self-portrait:



This picture is a mystery to me. In my defense, I can only assume that at some point in my formative years, I wore a ten-pound beard of bees in lieu of actual clothes. Oddly enough, I also had propeller hands. I'm glad I grew out of those because while I'm sure I would be able to swim like a mofo, performing ordinary tasks like typing and wiping my ass would be difficult at best. Sadly, judging from all available photographic evidence, the Donald Trump hairstyle I was sporting in this portrait was not far from reality.

This next picture is another one I drew of The Snitch:



This picture is clear evidence that The Snitch was replaced for a short time by Curious George. I will have to go through some old photos to prove this theory, but I am about 90% sure that I actually remember that happening.

This next one is also The Snitch. You can see that as I got older, my nascent artistic talent really started to flourish.



The most confusing thing about this drawing? I have no recollection of my brother ever wearing a tiny top-hat with two ants on it, who are also wearing top-hats. Never. Not even on weekends or holidays.

I have no idea what kind of toxic paste fumes I was sniffing, but they were obviously doing fantastic things to my mind. It was the early 70's, so the blue shirt and purple pants make sense, however it's apparent from the picture that The Snitch was clearly ahead of his time, fashion-wise. You can tell by how he went the extra mile and color-coordinated his actual hands with his shirt.

The other thing I can easily surmise from this picture is that my brother turned completely evil whenever he doffed his ant-infested top-hat. It's obvious from the wide, soul-devouring grin and the sinister, arched eyebrows.

That about does it for pictures of my family. I think later on they tried to get us to draw activities we liked to participate in, like this next picture:



As you can see, one of the things I enjoyed was taunting sperm whales with a pork chop on a string. If you know anything about fishing, you know that's how it's done with sperm whales.

Other popular subject matter included getting us to draw "holiday themed" pictures. Here's one of Santa Claus:



At least I think that's who it is. It's hard to tell, because there are some discrepancies here. He has obvious crotch problems, for example -- probably because his giant, hairy scrotum is hanging from his chin instead of from where it belongs. If I saw this individual come out of my chimney hole, I think I would probably beat him to death with a fireplace poker and ask questions later. Don't even get me started on the boots and the single white glove. My professional opinion: Not the real Santa.

From what I can tell, this next one is supposed to be representative of Halloween:



Needless to say, I have questions. First and foremost: What the fuck sort of deformed, one-eyed, one-armed, ant-eater-lookin' witch is that? Holy shit. I understand the magic wand bit, and I get that X's indicate actual magic in use, but why is she straddling a small palm tree? I also have no idea what the hell that giant black tentacle wearing a codpiece could possibly be. If anyone has any clue, I'm all ears (as you can see from my self-portrait a few pictures above this one). I have to say, though, the shoes are pretty damn good.

Last, but not least, is the pride of my collection. It's one of the few "very good" scores I actually received:



As for which holiday this picture is supposed to represent -- I'm not exactly sure. I think it's either Thanksgiving or Penis-In-A-Tree Day.

You probably want to find out for sure which one it is before you say yes to the stuffing.

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This line gets me into the feed over at humor-blogs.com. Check it out. There's some funny stuff over there.