Anatomically Incorrect

As an elementary schooler, I loved to draw. Girls. I loved to draw girls. My magic markers and I had a pretty rigid "no boys allowed" policy. There were several reasons for this:

1. Boys. Grody. (Okay, okay, so hating boys was just a front. Really I loooooooved the boys, but sometimes a girl has to save face in front of her USA co-Crushers.)
2. Because I was so accustomed to drawing girls, on the rare occasion that I did try to conjure the male form, dude usually ended up looking like a lady.
3. Even when I managed to sketch a passably boyish boy, he'd end up looking like this:

Bo-bo?! On top of drawing them, it seems I had a problem naming boys too.

Bo-bo here—I don't even want to hazard a guess as to how that's short for Timothy, lest my gray matter implode—may be wearing super-cool sneaks and a mildly obscene sweater (don't try to tell me that dog isn't exposing itself to me!), but you guys? Where is his crotch? WHERE IS BO-BO'S CROTCH? Wherever it is, I hope his forehead is there too. If there's an opposite of the Tyra Banks fivehead, then our pal Bo-bo has it:

One-and-a-half-head?

And on top of that (literally), I gave him a Three Stooges haircut. I was not doing Bo-bo any favors.

But this was not an isolated incident. Take a look at some more boy wreckage:

No, that's not a fat suit.

Yes, I know it looks like one.

Jimmy Ray is all, "Bo-bo? I see your vacant stare and hillbilly moniker, and I MOTHERFUCKING RAISE YOU." Also, I submit that the only way Jimmy Ray could be more froglike is if he changed his name to friggin' Kermit—and come to think of it, that might be an improvement.

"But," you say, "maybe we should take the boy out of the sweatpants [ew!] and find out what a cool guy would look like." Well, you asked for it.

The face of cool. No, that's not lipstick.

Shut up! He's just a pretty boy.

I mean, the only thing that could make him cooler is a half-shirt.

Brief aside: My sister & I used to coerce our mother into making us paper dolls drawn to our precise specifications, and one of them was a "hot boy" named Chris (because Chris was my go-to cool boy name circa 1988) who's wearing a motherloving half shirt. Think I'm joking?

Dude. I don't joke about half-shirts. Well, not this time, anyway.

But back to A. Tanner. Once again we have a boy with lifeless Orphan Annie eyes. Once again he has a bizarrely shortened midsection that makes me question his ability to digest food sans medical intervention. And once again his name is printed with an enormous lack of subtlety across his clothing (though I think that's justified in Jimmy Ray's case—he looks like the type who'd forget his own name). So just what makes A. Tanner one-and-a-half-head and shoulders above the rest? Two things (and no, his stylish baby blue smock isn't one of them):

1. The hair. Behold the magnificently spiky hair!
2. The earring, a sparkling beacon of awesome in a sea of otherwise humdrum earlobes.

Yes, men with solo earrings were so widespread in 1986 that I felt comfortable co-opting this look for a third grader. But! There were very strict guidelines for male ear piercing in the '80s. The golden rule was this: If the earring was in the left ear, the guy was straight; if it was in the right ear, he was gay, gay, a thousand times gay! Because in the '80s sexual preference had to do with which earlobe a dude punctured, not which gender he wanted to put his penis in. And God for-freaking-bid someone might think you wanted to make out with another dude.

So, because Aaron Tanner was the cutest, most heterosexualest boy in town he had his earring in the... oh, FUDGE.

The right—and simultaneously, wrong—earlobe.

But hey, this wasn't exactly a science. Right, George Michael?

Earring in the left ear = STRAIGHT?!

[Image found here.]

I rest my case. Anyone care to Google Chad Allen's earlobes?

NEXT TIME: If pencils could talk... apparently they'd be quite cynical.

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.

Prostitution People

This picture tells a story beloved by schlocky film execs everywhere: mousy introvert gets contact lenses, a miniskirt, and instant popularity! It's titled (what, you guys didn't title your fourth grade drawings?) PERSONALITY PEOPLE.

No, really.

[You can click to enlarge, but please rest assured that we are going to cover this in excruciating detail.]

Personality plus!

Our heroine/fashion victim/Jerrica Benton sans Synergy is Dora Lee Kawalksi.

You can tell she needs a makeover because she has a semi-dowdy name and GLASSES. Make me gag!

How hard has Dora Lee been gagging on her old she's-not-yet-all-that style? So hard that I had to put an extra exclamation point at the beginning of the sentence. Dude. That's a lot of gagging.

But this is just our piddling BEFORE photo; as the drawing promises, with Dora Lee we get:

Again with the extraneous punctuation. !This crap is exciting! !I don't know if you guys noticed! !WOO!

That's because our ho-hum friend Dora Lee is about to transform herself into... a straight-up ho?

[Okay, NOW you should click to enlarge.]

The fun has been AT LEAST doubled.

First off, it's obvious that Dora Lee has been under the knife. I don't work for US Weekly or anything, but I can spot the rhinoplasty and chin implant from here.

[Quick sidebar: When I was in college, a weak-chinned chap who lived on my floor actually got a chin implant—and it ended up CROOKED because he spent too much time, like, stroking it. Ew? Looks like the same thing happened to ol' D.L. Kawalski here.]

Once you get past the plastic surgery, you can see that the '80s pretty much erupted on this drawing, spewing forth the molten lava of oversized floppy bows, polka dot capri leggings, and shapeless off-the-shoulder shirts cinched with stripy belts.

So, she looks like a hooker, but a fashion-forward hooker. A totally '80s hooker. I mean, check this out:

Jet: confirmed call girl.

How else can she afford a ring on every finger; earrings that are, like, tiny lampshades dangling from dice; and OH MY GOD, is that a Watch-a-call?

But please, don't get all Lifetime-y and try to hire Meredith Baxter and Valerie Bertinelli to track Jet down and let loose some vigilante justice on her pimp. [Note to Lifetime executives: This would be an amazing concept for a series.] That's because, well, I'll let Dora Lee tell you herself:

See, guys! It's fine! Because she was already a prostitute on the INSIDE.

Okay, okay. Maybe she's not a prostitute. Maybe everyone wants to call and chit-chat with her because she has such a great personality.

Yeah, that's it.

NEXT TIME: What's better than one makeover? How about making over an entire band?

The Future Is Now!

The following was definitely some sort of class assignment to, I don't know, come up with an ad? Because I had Don Draper for a teacher? Not too sure. What I do remember is thinking that if this product existed, it would be the COOLEST. THING. EVER. Fast-forward 20-some years, and... well, see for yourself.

What exactly is a Watch-a-call, you ask? And is Pepsi going to sue me for trademark infringement? Well the answer—to the first question, anyway—lies in the advertising copy:

Watch-a-call

It's a watch with a phone inside!

No extra for long distance calls!

$99.89 Just $50.00!

So, okay, I know it sounds like a cell phone, but check it out. It looks like a Swatch!

Admit it, cell phones would be cooler if you could get your name on them.

And if you're thinking to yourself, "Okay, smartypants, where do I DIAL?" well then you clearly have yet to encounter the back view of the Watch-a-call:

The world's most sloppily drawn keypad.

I actually imagined this would be some super-secret 10-year-old spy shit. Here's how it would go down:

Watch-a-call in action!

On one side of the lightning bolt, you and your side pony would be sitting at your desk in your invisible chair that kinda makes you look like a paraplegic. And you'd be like, "Hey, this lesson on multiplication tables BLOWS! I wonder what my friend with the newscaster hair is up to right now?" BAM! On the other side of the lightning bolt, your questionably bewigged friend with the World's Longest Torso would receive your call as a series of super-loud BEEPs that would surely get your Watch-a-call confiscated until the end of the day. Brilliant!

Joking aside, it's kind of amazing that this product almost exists now—I mean, a cell phone is pretty much a phone with a watch inside, making it, like, um... a Call-a-watch? And it even has free long distance, which seemed like CRAZY wishful thinking at the time. Granted, a cell phone's not all incognito like the Watch-a-call, but I'm guessing that holding your wristwatch up to your ear repeatedly would probably blow your cover anyway.

NEXT TIME: More pictures tellin' some stories. (That's code for "I haven't picked out which one I'm going to use yet.")

Fashion Backward

You guys? Why do I have this blog format where I write novella chapter book–length entries? It's killing me. Not to get all Woe Is Me on you here, but the main reason for my spotty blog performance is that I have chronic forearm pain. (Starting a blog? Maaaaybe not the most brilliant idea I've ever had.) And I have two jobs! I don't want you guys to think I'm just lazy. Okay, SOMETIMES I'm lazy, but other times I'm like, "I want to blog! I want to blog! Blogging... blogging... Ouch! Ouch ouch OUCH." And then I have to stop. And wait a few days. And try again. So, I'm sorry. Rest assured that even when I'm not blogging, I am thinking about blogging and yearning to recount my prepubescence in embarrassing detail.

I have a bigger entry in the works, but I thought I'd get this little one out for you in the meantime. Because some of you have been writing very nice things about me on your blogs (thank you!), and I'm feeling especially guilty. This one is dedicated to That Kind of Girl, who I would totally give a blog award to if I had the arm capacity for such a thing (speaking of which, Sadako, I owe you one too) and fashion blogger Sara M., who apparently doesn't realize I was born all the way back in 1977. Thank you, Sara M., THANK YOU. For that I am bringing you this fashion-tastic post.

So you know how when I "wrote a book" (is there any way I can not put that in quotes?), I often liked to whip up a nice visual representation of my protag? Well, sometimes I'd just do the character illustration and skip the whole "book" part. I was crazy like that! This post features such potential heroines in search of a plotline.

Oh, and the best part is that they're all drawn on random Dun & Bradstreet paper that has this awesomeness at the top:

Only imagine it SUPER GINORMOUS.

My keys to success? First off, character names stolen from Can't Buy Me Love (click the images to enlarge; if you suffer from an irrational fear of poofy hair and geometric-shape earrings, DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK):

Why yes, I'd like to spill a glass of wine on ALL OF THIS, thanks!

So instead of Miss Popularity, my Cindi Mancini is... um... a moderately snazzy Hasidic Jew? Unless you have some other explanation for that skirt? Actually, I'm not convinced that Cindi Mancini is her name. It might just be the name of both of her arms and her right leg. And the utterly bewildered rabbit on her chest. But if so, what's the abandoned sailor shirt's name? Ronald? No no, you're right, it's DONALD.

Next up is another Cindy. A New, Cool, and IMPROVED Cindy. (Wait, I just realized that all of these gals have roughly the same name. But such different styles! *cough*)

Really? Huh. I'm not so sure I want to see the old Cindy...

Nothing like announcing how cool and improved you are VIA SWEATSHIRT. Baby Hands here looks like she's struggling to maintain balance. That bow on her head may be a little too tight...

Also, if The Make-Out Team ever breaks up, my next band is definitely going to be called Baby Hands and the Vast Improvements.

And then, you guys? Then? There's Cynthia Viot (not Voit, VIOT), who has outfits for all seasons and time. Don't believe?

For all time! But especially for four o'clock.

Where do we even start? How about with the Stylish ("Mini-mini") look. Which... is that a joke? Because this is Cynthia Viot! All of her looks are stylish!

Anyone else picturing this on Verne Troyer right now, or is it just me?

"Mini-mini" should maybe be renamed "Quintessentially '80s." Side pony? Check. Off-the-shoulder sweater dress? Check. Oversized belt, squiggly earrings, and stack of bangle bracelets cutting off circulation to a critical limb? Check, check, and CHECK! (Helloooo, her arm is quite clearly stunted.) The flats with anklets are just a bonus.

But the "Mini-mini" is not for every day. No sir. For that we have the "Totally Me."

More like "Totally Saddlebags."

Totally mom capris and geyser hair! And weird bug-eyed monkey face! That's totally me! But look how I've brought the geometric shapes and the squiggles TOGETHER AT LAST.

And now for a completely different season (oh, wait), it's Casual Summer, aka "Sunglasses":

Dude. Her sunglasses might be wearing sunglasses.

She's wearing sunglasses, her shirt's wearing sunglasses, and her belt is made o' sunglasses. It's not clear what her earrings are, but I'd say sunglasses are a safe bet. Say, what's that you've got behind your back, Cynthia? Oh, let me guess... [Note: I meant sunglasses, but if you were thinking "baby hands," you're probably right too.]

But it's not all fun and games with Miss Viot. Sometimes she has to go to school, and that's when she reveals the "Uniformed" look:

"You're taking a fashion risk. I like that."

Everything I knew about school uniforms I learned from watching Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Namely, that they were better when fastened with Velcro and accessorized with giant dinosaur hair clips. Or, as pictured here, just plain ol' giant hair.

Actually, I'm noticing that Cynthia's hair always reaches to her shoulders, no matter what her hairstyle (one exception: the Hair Fountain, which... yeah, you know you want to scroll back and look at that mess again). Huh. How does that work?

When she's not in school, sometimes our girl just has to fancy it the hell up, with "Bows, Bows, Bows" (really, is there any other way?):

That's a fuck-ton of bows all right.

The bow epaulets are particularly nice. Bows: the '80s equivalent of bling?

The real question is how did this deserve three "bows" when Casual Summer got but a single "sunglasses"?

NEXT TIME: The Sig Saga continueth. For real, you guys. For really real.

In the meantime, you might enjoy Psyched on the Prairie, wherein a grown woman is reading all of the Little House books for the first time (and learning a lot about pig anatomy, woolen veils, and Pa's beard in the process), or the pee-your-pants hilarious Awesomely Bad High School Diary trilogy on Steam Me Up, Kid. Click here for parts 1, 2, and 3, respectively. I only WISH I'd written poetry about the possibility of boys scamming on me! So many opportunities lost... So, so many...