This is sorta a long story
Click to viewSooooooooooooo, long ago when dinosaurs roamed freely and I was in art school, I had a project that involved making a children's book character that was "non-tradition" (read: NOT cute, NOT furry, NOT IN ANY WAY adorable). I didn't have kids, didn't plan to, and didn't want to be a children's book illustrator, so this assignment really sucked. I'd recently heard Sandra Bernhard's "Jazzy Spider" piece, so I made a beatnik spider with a turtleneck, beret, and a pencil mustache. I think I got a B on the project - not important - but MB really liked the spider. Like, way too much (I hate spiders). Anyway, he made this little Jazzy Spider dance and bass line song thingy, and imagined said spider leisurely descending his spider silk to a smokey, dimly-lit stage at some jazz club in deepest, darkest Manhattan, and then lighting a doob and grooving out like the end was upon him. This spider lore has lived in our house for over a decade.
So, yesterday a writer friend of mine was trying to cheer me up by emailing pictures of stories she wrote when she was 7 years old. They were cute and hilarious. But here's where the spider comes back: one of her many characters was a spider called Seatbelt. Well, I LOL'd, and then I went home and told MB about it.
This started the Jazzy Spider obsession anew.
So now, MB randomly dances around the house, singing funky bass lines, and generally acting like an over-caffeinated Capuchin monkey (though he thinks he looks like a spider). This new dance/song/interpretive art piece is called... (wait for it)...
"Here Comes Seatbelt". *faceplam*
I see a spider story in my future...