pants on my head, pants on my legs

so today was Crafty Bastards.

what?

yes.

crafty bastards!

which was, predictably, full of people.
lots of people.
some with dogs.

i made a couple of purchases.
- a neat shirt from barry's farm.
- this awesome print from bendependent (mostly for mr pants. holy crap!)
- some cool wooden art things featuring goofus and gallant.(and now for a long aside about G&G)

i grew up reading highlights magazine. i mean, who didn't. (if you didn't, you're pretty fucking sad really. highlights was awesome, and educational. i had a subscription. which came in MY name. fuck yeah!) and goofus and gallant were one of my favorite features. and of course, i wanted to be like gallant. to quote:

(Goofus panel) Goofus climbs up to get his daddy's gun.
(Gallant panel) "That's Daddy's Gun. I Don't touch it."

Seriously. being like goofus would get a man killed. and at 5, just learning how to read and have social skills like a human being... no. i was not about to subject myself to that kind of life, let me tell you. Not that Gallant was cool - he was a little bit like those obnoxiously cloying sweet, "good" children in Dickens who usually ended up getting some ridiculously fatal disease, or at least being horribly crippled. other than, i guess, oliver twist. while the dodger - certainly the Goofus of victorian literature - pretty apparently gets it in the end (him and his buddy master bates), little Oliver gets to live all in one piece (though, maybe asking for MORE qualifies him a little goofus-like quality... yes... little oliver is in a lot of ways like Gallant gone a little wrong here and there. but enough comparing highlights magazine to high victorian literature...

Goofus looks at many of the comic books at the drugstore without buying them.
(Gallant) "My daddy says I must never read books in a store unless I have bought them."

Yes, as a bookstore employee, I am a big fan of Gallant's gallantry. but at the same time, i completely was Goofus as a kid. and really, why does Goofus's abhorent behavior get an omniscient third person narrative, whereas Gallant is speaking for himself? could Goofus obviously anti-social attitudes towards life, his family, and his friends really be the product of a frontal lobotomy? yes, i know there are strips where he talks too but my recollection is that the majority of them go this way, with Gallant showing the good while Goofus is someone's puppet. we see what he does, but is he really doing it because he wants to? or has all of his free will and good decision making been erased for a creepy experiment used to teach children proper behavior? and how do we jump from reading comic books in the drug store to grabbing daddy's gun? is this kid a sociopath in waiting?

mcsweeney's take on the pair is also a distinct possibility.

(and now to our regular scheduled ramblings)

- also, there was a guy with cigar box guitars and amps. i want one. apparently, you can get them online, though the website function seems lacking...

afterwards, we trecked down U street for some cake love/love cafe cupcakes. but, my love for warren brown's buttercream recipe is fodder for another post...

anyway. been a while. won't be one again.