Show Me the Bunny

You know how when you were a kid, having a favorite animal was a Really Big Deal? And every time you'd be at a carnival or a gift shop or Carlton Cards at the mall, you'd pester your mom into letting you buy a miniature version of that animal? And you'd keep the entire collection on your bedroom wall in a wooden curio shelf shaped like a house? Well, for me that animal was the rabbit.

For full effect, imagine this filled with tiny, tacky bunnies.

So obviously, when we had to write an animal report in third grade, I chose to research rabbits. I enigmatically titled the report "Rabbits: Breeds of Rabbits and other things about them."

The report's cover rabbit. Note: Those are paws, not a pair of saggy bunny boobs.

This report was chock full of information. Did you know that rabbits aren't rodents, because rodents have two pairs of front teeth whereas rabbits have only one? Or that rabbits differ from hares because rabbits give birth to ugly, hairless little creatures with closed eyes while hares have attractive, furry newborns that can see?

On the other hand, I may have included a bit TOO MUCH information. One of the "other things" I felt it necessary to (over)share about rabbits? If they eat too many greens they will get diarrhea. Seriously. This report has the word diarrhea in it.

A large part of the reason for my bunny love was that my sister and I were the proud owners of our own big-toothed boxes of hair. Realistically, owning rabbits should have made us despise them. Our rabbits (unconventionally named Bun-bun and Cottontail) seemed to fear for their lives whenever we got within 10 feet of them and would use any means necessary to avoid human contact. This made the normal things you do with a pet—like, I don't know, petting them—exceedingly difficult.

Me in a dress straight outta Oleson's Mercantile, Cottontail (that damn Bun-bun was next to impossible to catch!), and my sister.

Because this report was about breeds of rabbit (and other things about them), I note that Cottontail is "probably Dutch." As you can tell, it was an extremely scientific report. It also has illustrations on the right way to hold a rabbit...

You can see I was used to rabbits expressing abject terror when handled.

...and the wrong way to hold a rabbit (which I noted as my preferred method—whatever, "professionals"):

"Most books don't say to hold them this way, but I do anyway."

Then I compare the Angora and Dutch rabbit breeds. Third-grade conclusion? Angoras and Dutches are very different. (If you were wondering, I got an A+ on this project. 32-year-old conclusion: I could make a KILLING ghostwriting reports for third graders.)

Here's the Angora:

And here's the Dutch:

But what does all of this rabbitry have to do with my burgeoning writing career? Well, learning about the different rabbit breeds inspired me to draft a book about animals. Anthropomorphic animals. Very fashionable, hip, and emotional anthropomorphic animals. Chapter 1? BUNNIES. (And don't get your hopes up—there is no Chapter 2.)

First stop on our Tour de Rabbit Breeds is the cottontail. Cottontail was not just the name of our pet rabbit, it's also a breed! Kind of like how Cy Sperling's not just the president of the Hair Club for Men, he's also a client. For comparative purposes, here's a photo of a real-life cottontail rabbit:

Image found here.

And here's my version, Cool Carrie Cottontail:

Because even when I drew a friggin' rabbit, it ended up looking like a prostitute.

You can see that the actual, factual cottontail rabbit has neither a pig snout, false eyelashes, nor fishnet stockings. Hell, it doesn't even have high heels or little ribbons on its ears! However, the jury's still out on its ability to duplicate choreography from Saturday Night Fever.

Next we have my version of the Dutch rabbit:

Image found here.

Dancing Denise Dutch (oh, the alliteration!) looks less like a sex worker and more like a reject from Breakin' 2: Bunny Bugaloo:

"Out of my way, fools! There are rec centers to be saved! With BREAK DANCING!"

Is it just her markings, or is Denise wearing some sort of facial sling? Maybe her jaw was breakin' also (zing!). But I stick by my theory that she has on fingerless gloves and fashionably holey tights. And maybe a prison-issued muumuu?

But my favorite here is the Angora. Which, once again, in actuality looks like this:

Image found here.

Mine, on the other hand? That'd be Angry Amy Angora:

Yeah, Amy (once again with a pig nose; though I owned a rabbit, I seem to have had no idea what their little sniffers looked like) is pouting huffily in a chair. Meanwhile, she has scrawled "I HATE YOU! Sincerely, Amy" on the ground. Man! I wonder what Passive-Aggressive Paula Patagonian would have looked like...

NEXT TIME: Why I never drew boys.

Before I end this, I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone who has been following 30 is the new 13 in spite of my spotty updating. Chronic arm pain and blogging don't really mix, but what can I say? I'm a rebel. A very sore-armed rebel. Also, I know about 800 of you (or maybe five?) are waiting to be guest authors, and I want you to know I haven't forgotten you! I'm planning to have some guest author posts up soon—although, considering my recent record, "soon" may be a subjective term. I'll do my best!

No boy bands allowed

Do we have to talk about how long I've been gone? I've been gone a long time. A long, looooong time. The past two months were unexpectedly busy, but now it looks like I will—just as unexpectedly—have a lot more time on my hands. This is probably bad news for my bank account, but hopefully good news for the blog. So... yay?

This installment of Every Picture Tells a Story was probably drawn during the height of my obsession with wanting to form a band. (Third grade? Fourth grade? Did I ever STOP want to form a band? Do I STILL want to form a band, even though I would now be in the 26th grade? The answers are probably, maybe, definitely not, and oh hells yes, respectively.)

Behold the titular girls of Girls Only, a band whose members sky-rocketed to fame after they adopted questionable pseudonyms and started rocking malls across the U.S. of A.:

Where to start? How about the band's obvious leader, Sax-o? And if you don't think a saxophone player could be the key component to a band, you clearly do not remember the '80s, wherein there was at least one gratuitous sax solo in every song, sometimes two. I think Reagan may have signed it into law at some point. What I'm saying is, the '80s? They were saxy. Like, this is what a saxophone player looked like in 1987:

Body grease courtesy of i-mockery.com.

Well, this and the littlest orphan girl on Rags to Riches, who I totally would have pulled a Single White Female on, except I was nine and Single White Female wouldn't come out for another five years.

After the '80s? Dudes with saxophones looked like this:

Small favor: At least Kenny wasn't into the "g-string with chain belt" look.

Plus you can tell Sax-o was the brains behind this operation because I drew a heart around her and gave her a rad belly shirt in the Before drawing:

You can't have an entire band of Plain Janes; someone has order the side ponytails. And I don't see any hologram-generating supercomputers around here—do you? Plus, it's really impressive that Cindy is a sax player WITHOUT ANY ARMS. Do you see arms? Or just copious hair? Observe her post-makeover:

NARY AN ARM TO BE FOUND! But who needs 'em when you have giant segmented pigtails and a saxophone that strongly resembles a fat banana? I kind of don't want to know how she keeps that thing in her mouth.

Sax-o's partner in coolness is Keys—which, quite frankly, I could only tell because of the handy heart encircling enhearting. Tell me, was slicking your bangs back with an eyebrow-level headband ever fashion-forward?

You are treading dangerously close to Geordi La Forge territory, my friend.

It seems like it would be hard to play the piano with hooves for hands, but this band does have an armless saxophone player, and that one-armed drummer from Def Leppard seemed to do all right for himself, so who am I to judge? You can see that Keys' awesomeness only increased when she started wearing choir robes instead of real clothing:

That has to be a keyboard, right? I mean, her name is friggin' Keys, not Desks.

If I could pick Sax-o's second-in-command again, I probably would go with Dray, because she looks kind of like Joan Jett:

Also loves rock 'n' roll.

You'd think that the addition of a drum kit would make her a total badass, but...

Noooooo! Make it stop!

Yeah, someone (read: me) forgot the "kit" part. It's like she swiped this from a drum circle on her way back from a scuba lesson. (Those are flippers she's wearing, are they not?) And just in case you guys didn't know what a flower drum song sounds like, it's this: "bom bom." The saxophone and the keyboard, they make music. The drum? Bom bom.

Next we have Getta, who looks a little like one of the girls in One Crazy Summer who got slapped on the back and discovered her face really would stay like that:

Sax-o: "Want to join our band?"

Keys: "Don't look so surprised. You can play... um... a large string instrument?"

WHAT IS THAT THING? A bass that must be played violin-style? And what kind of advanced yogi shit is she doing with her arms? Does anyone in this band have normal appendages?!

Then we have the Commitmentettes TrayLaas, identical triplets who could sorely use some advice from the author of Curly Girl:

After? They're basically the honky version of Crystal, Ronnette, and Chiffon in Little Shop of Horrors. (Yes, our taped-off-of-HBO copy of Little Shop had its fair share of viewings.) Oh, and on top of being white, they also have wilty, singing beehives.

Wilty beehives: "Feed us, Sax-o!"

And finally? Minnie. Actually, stop the presses, er, blog-publishing mechanism! Was I wrong? Was Minnie always the one in charge? Because she doesn't even merit a "Before" drawing, that's how frappin' sophis she is. You can tell because she has CLEAVAGE.

Oooo indeed.

She also has a scary man-arm (maybe she's been stealing everyone else's limbs and somehow injecting them into her right arm? ...or else she's an avid bowler?) and a bizarre Princess-Leia-meets-Orthodox-Jewish-fellow hairstyle, but? Forgivable. Because she has a fancy dress on and CLEAVAGE. Have I mentioned the cleavage?

Sadly, we can only imagine the amazing music produced when saxophone, keyboard, conga drum, bassolin, saggy beehives, and cleavage at last meet.

NEXT TIME: Rabbits in fishnets. I so, so, SO wish I was joking.