Day: August 11, 1996

Boston. July 4. Summer of 1990. These flyers were littered all over Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Mark, Ed, Joe, and Dave were walking around with me when we discovered this impassioned plea for the return of this lost kitty. Passionate or not, we still generated a full three-hour assortment of jokes trying to figure out exactly what the hell the deal was with the cat and the tubes. “It’s the kitty calliope!” “It’s the cat who can be played like a bagpipe!” “The tubes must be for draining precious brain fluid so that the cat doesn’t take over the house once and for all!” I can barely remember all the material, but the image is so potent, it can still reduce any of us to tears of laughter.

I purchased these mints in the Shanghai airport. I went into the lounge to try and get rid of some loose change when my jaw hit the floor upon seeing a box full of these mints. Having grown up in an era (and an area) where all the lawn jockeys were repainted to look like clowns or white people, it was shocking to see that the “minstrel” was still considered a novel advertising gimmick in some part of the world. Despite the addition of the accent to the name (apparently a nod to the civil rights movement), the attempt to cash in on the same image that Al Jolson used for a while seems obvious.

My friend Eileen, known for her eagle eye when it comes to the subtleties of Americana, found this small prayer card for me at a religious statue and souvenir shop in downtown Boston. She instantly knew that I would see the wonderful inherent wackiness of this combination of Jesus, Boy Scouts, and a vision of St. George slaying the dragon. You figure out the semiotics.