#213 :: “Chato,” the Homies Pit Bull

pilule troche ‘popup’, ampoule ed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )
mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”
viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.