(Reprinted from PopKrazy)
Forget the burgeoning baseball season, forget rereading Raymond Chandler or keep reading Steve Erickson, forget the Boston Globe sports page, forget continually listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage, forget obsessively filling the backlog of my unseen Gunsmoke episodes, forget making lists of the top ten Warren Oates’ character names, forget buying every single ripped-off, repetitive, and badly recorded Johnny Thunders recording evah, forget checking a few more outré film noirs off the grand list, forget finishing that piece about the stony greatness of Pynchon’ s last book, forget about finally beginning that new David Foster Wallace kinda-last-maybe-baby novel. Fuggedabouit, I’ve acquired a new hobby, another fresh and fertile landscape to explore, somehow a totally new (and astonishingly original) slab of pop cult meat to vulture on.
I do indeed own dogs, and dig those dogs (Boston Terriers named Francis and Alfredo), but I’m not a drooling beastie lover like so many I know, fighting back antic urges to spew baby animal smack tawk or tackle and pet and roll in the dirt with four-leggers behind cages or fences or sticking their heads outta passing car windows. Nor do I go hog wild over the Animal Planet show choices (truth be told, haven’t watched or desired to watch one show on this specialized cable network, so much that even when I was sick and could barely manipulate the clicker I passed it bye-bye), or read any sorta book that has anything to do with wild or tame beasts, or even considered the real life touching or petting of animals that don’t reside in my very own household. Nope, not me, and although I didn’t wanna admit it way back when, I didn’t even dig the whole Lassie scene, never mind the horribly monikered Rin Tin Tin.
Hardy-har-har, the funny part is the whole too-cool-too-be-true hobby kinda centers around animals, although they are as dead as the proverbial doornail or like Barry Goldwater’s corpse. Other killer aspect is that I can do a whole lotta boning up on the art/craft/science of my new hobby, and I don’t usually go near the science thang. (A sign of maturity, perhaps. Somebuddy tell my wife.) Other topnotch debating point: I’ll join a cult of few rather than more, and I’ll jump straight into the gonzo weirdness, immediately staking out the point-of-view of a verified hipster connoisseur and commentator, and that’s tough to do at my age. Further bonus: I also get to apply my finely honed critical skills into a pop culture sidebar that combines photography, absurdism, redneckism, and you just can’t beat the combo, even my pop cult guru Mr. Hull of PopKrazy can’t, and he was born and bred in the South and recklessly celebrates his heritage.
What I am talking about? Forgive me, but I haveta exhort and counsel you all (notice the southern verbiage, although please don’t discount this all those of who reside in Michigan)) about perhaps the greatest blog I’ve come across yet in the grand, vast, empty slop-bucket blogosphere—Crappy Taxidermy. I’m long gone, I’m hooked, I’m over the top, and I sincerely guarantee you that those you’ve long admired—like Lux Interior, Harvey Pekar, Elisha Cook, Jr, Russ Meyer, and RL Burnside—were on to this from the very beginning, no kidding at all. That means something. Trust me bro’s and sis’s.
It’s Crappy Taxidermy, and it should be all the time—stroke those thumbs and go straight onto http://crappytaxidermy.com/.
You won’t regret it, no way Jack (or Jill) or Rover.
