Zappadan Adventure

It's Zappadan, that time of year between December 4 and December 21, when we gather together on the warm tendons strung between us (internets) to celebrate the life of Frank Vincent Zappa, delivered to us at precisely the right time, then taken too soon.

During the summer, I purchased this poster, which to me is sublime for a number of reasons:
1. The cheap Chroma-Key? background
2. The partly dead plants
3. Those shoes, which some stylish gent would covet nowadays
4. Peter Max socks
5. The jaunty neckerchief
6. Unapologetic smoking
7. Leopard-print Speedo flocked by generously untrimmed pubes 
8. The smoky, sardonic glance

I'm sure there are more. Turned out, I procrastinated just long enough for the hanging up of this poster to coincide with Zappadan. Unintentional brilliance.

Anyway, because it's just for me and not for the prying eyes of others, I wanted to laminate it (so I could use tape to hang it on the back of my closet door, so that I could go in and look at it when I needed a laugh or confidence or courage or acceptance, so that I could gaze upon one whom I regard as a bodhisattva of sorts). For this, I'd need to hit the Christian bookstore, home of the thickest, cheapest plastic coating machine in the land (25 cents a foot! Thick!)

I strode into the Christian bookstore, thronged round by dogma, strode to the back of the store, past the homeschooling dreck, to the waiting, already warm laminator. Into its primed maw I thrust the raw image, sexual, hilarious, unflinching, using my ample body as a barrier between it and any virginal gazes. A few times, believers approached, yet the dark force of my will and determination must have turned them back. Finished, I cut the smooth plastic, rolled up the rock and roll, and headed to the register, where a predictably prim woman jockeyed competently. "Is that all?" she asked, her hand starting to unroll the edge. "YES, just one poster," I said, a little too loudly, moving it deftly back. I paid the 81 cents and left, heart beating faster.

If I'm truly the jaded rebel that I think I am, why did this feel so dangerous?

------------------------------------

"Look here, brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?" - FZ

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