A young country lad went into the city looking for "a good time". Having never "been with a woman", his father had sent him here so that he could sow his wild oats with some cheap whore instead of his mom or sisters (his Father claimed them for his own years ago.) Soon enough, he found a woman... or something that looked enough like a woman for his indiscriminating tastes. She had no feet, the result of "accidentally forgetting" to pay her pimp she said, but wore pink shoes that kept coming off. In fact, one came loose on the way to the Under Arms hotel (hourly rates available) and, in an effort to impress the tu-ne-ped-pas prostitute, he ran back to retrieve it. She smirked and told the bumpkin to keep it as a "souveneir." (The reality was that she would simply raid the nearby daycare for more shoes the next day.) Up in the room, the boy was having some problems finding how to actually complete the act. So as not to embarass himself infront of the seemingly bored strumpet, he called his father at home for advice. "Well son," he said, "you take the hardest thing you got and put it where she pees." The father heard his son ask the woman, "Where do you pee?" followed by silence. A single muffled bang was heard, then the boy came back on the line. "OK Dad, I threw a shoe into the alley, now what?"

Seen last week in a New York street paper:

LOST: Help. I've lost a ballet slipper. It's a very important ballet slipper, given to me by my dance instructor two weeks before he died. He was very special to me, and so is this memento of his caring.

If you find my beloved slipper, please contact me at:

Tim "Lil Orphan" Fanny
c/o Somewhere Over The Rainbow -
An All-Male Midget Review and Burlesque
enjoying a limited engagement at the Judy Garland Theater in Hoboken

And thank you.

PS - For a good time, call my agent. I do private bachelor parties, conventions, legionaires shows, and the occasional republican party convention.

I mean ... Cinderella

I love those shoes. If I were gaye enough ... and brave enough ... I would wear them myself. I also like the Cinderela idea. Maybe there is a Prince Charming out there for everyone ... even if it is a gaye baby.

You just knew that if you kept your box open long enough, I'd come again.

The picture of the shoe is sad for all these reasons or more, but mostly because what is just outside of the picture: Her dead body moments after being struck by a UPS truck.

It was an ordinary enough day. Even though she was 6, her love of frozen dairy treats was borderline legendary. Today's cravings drew her into town and to that particular shop whose wall her now useless shoe lay against. So enraptured with her prize, she rushed towards her Mommy's car across the street without looking both ways. The impact was as fatal as it was messy: Clothes flew everywhere and her internal organs were reduced to the consistency of soft-serve.

The horror... The horror...

And a waste of some damn fine ice cream.

Good show, people! Keep 'em comin'!

My purpose in commenting in my own comments box (sexy!) is twofold: (1) to show my appreciation to those who have graced me with commentary; and (2) to assure those of you writing and/or reading this comments box that I am indeed "around". True, I could be posting an entry right now instead of playing around with my comments (sexy again!), but ... no. I just don't want to.

Carry on!

It looks to me like some little girl stood too close under that building's pneumatic conveyor system, and ended up in Accounts Payable. I'm sure she's fine.

It's sad because it belonged to an orphan and that was the only nice thing she'll ever own.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b296/ConFan415/Image_96_Crying_Orphan_Girl.jpg

microbehavior:

try heating up a small bowl of soup. that takes exactly one minute. hit the "quick minute" button, or reasonable facsimile thereof, and wander into your hallway and pretend to arrange your spring outerwear.

voila! hot soup.

A possible non-sad explanation:

Clarissa had begged her Mommy ardently for months: "Mommy, all the girls have new shoes in bright new colours, and they laugh at me and tease me for having "girlie shoes". Please please please can I have new shoes in oh, a nice cherry red or perhaps tangerine?"

Finally her mother relented, and Clarissa got her new shoes. She conscientiously donated her old shoes to the Salvation Army, but even the poorest of the poor kids would rather go barefoot than be out of fashion, and eventually the shoes were discarded on the street.

Funny you should post this, Jodi. Just this past weekend I bought my eight-year-old daughter a pair of hot pink high top Chuck Taylors. She did not even ask for them. I wanted them for myself, knew that at my age I couldn't pull it off, and decided to live vicariously through my daughter. It is only a matter of time before she loses one of them and I am faced with the disappointment and disillusionment captured so poignantly in this photo. (my disappointment and disillusionment, not hers) Do any of us little girls ever grow up? I hope not.

I see happiness not sadness in that pink ballet slipper! It is not screaming, "Oh, woe is me!". It is instead an opportunity! Yes, an opportunity for the inner Cinderella in all New Yorkers to finally emerge...

Stand back and let the magic happen!!!!

Even with no eyelets from which to see, she stared back at me accusitorily. Even with no tongue with which to speak, it cried out to me, "Salvation, please! Can't you see that I've been abandoned? I've been left here, all tied up, and you won't rescue me. You betrayer! You're just like the rest of them!" I felt sorry for her: Like some of the other "sidewalk hostesses," she was cute on the outside, tight and pink on the inside. But looking deeper into to her very essence, I saw that all the time on the street had made it impossible to save her sole.

Argh, my eyes! The inhumanity of that image will burn in my memory forever, scalded into my soft, maleable retinas like the flash-burn of a thermonuclear detonation.

Never have I witnessed an atrocity such as this - Pepto Bismo pink against a gritty and muted grey and pale green sea of soothing urban tranquility.

And they say New York is the fashion capital of the world. My sensibilities are offended, nay, even forever lost.

For shame. For shame that in a Garanimals world, we cannot coordinate our colors.

How sad.

Little girl in me talking: Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh...I want my itty bitty pink shoe...I want my itty bitty pink shoe...I want my itty bitty pink shoe and no amount of ice cream, chocolate or cutesy wootsey dolly is going to make be feel better.

I'll just sit over here in my tear-stained pink ruffeled dress and matching panties and pout and don't you even think about trying to straighten my pigtails.

Adult talking: I have always been mortified by the one shoe discovery after seeing someone hit by a car and literally being blown out of their shoe...I'd go on, but yuck! Thanks for sending me back to the medicine cabinet for St. John's Wort.

Kudos to you, Kate. You just made me GOL like an idiot.

*Sniff, sniff...** Singing ever-so-quietly, "Hold me closer, TINY DANCER!!" (The last two words an uncontrollable wail of heartbreaking, poignant ANGUISH.) Where is all the fucking tissue??? It comes into this house by the TRUCKLOAD, practically, and I am in my THIRD CONSECUTIVE TISSUE-LESS ROOM TODAY.

In other words, the wee, desolate shoe is VERY, VERY SAD. On the VERY, VERY SAD spectrum it falls somewhere HIGHER than the unnaturally extreme reaction I had the other day when I FINALLY changed the fucking cat litter, took a nap (which is a euphemistic way of describing my current medication situation - I AM DRUGGED OUT OF MY BLEEDING MIND), and four hours later THE LITTER BOX WAS GONE. GONE. Turns out my nephew and niece had known it had been stinking to high heaven and so at her insistence he dumped it out (????) - my apologies to the sanitation department for the loose CAT FECES spicing up the, no doubt, already DELIGHTFULLY PUNGENT trash (I guess they can be thankful it was only a few hours dirty - but my Kitten Children make CERTAIN to defecate promptly into a clean litter box, so I know it wasn't SHIT-FREE) - and then noticed that there was NO LITTER TO PUT BACK IN THE BOX (interestingly enough because I had USED THE REST OF IT). So it's certainly SADDER than that, but on the VERY, VERY SAD spectrum it is not as sad as when Charles (the brother, who, by all genetic rights - reaping the rewards of a LENGTHY and vastly "EXPERIMENTAL" adolescence - should NEVER have had enough unscarred sperm to make such an incredibly beautiful baby as my youngest niece), was really little and Janet took him out of his nap (BAD GIRL) and HE got in trouble and cried with a mouth full of graham cracker. That's so SAD! And I suppose it goes without saying that on the VERY, VERY SAD spectrum it doesn't equal the heartrending impact of most natural disasters and such.

Oh. You wanted to know WHY the forlorn little shoe was so VERY, VERY SAD. Well, for one thing, it isn't ACTUALLY a ballet slipper; it just looks like one. And just in case you think that makes it BETTER - GOD, NO - that's SO MUCH WORSE. It is an ACTUAL SHOE (not one just to be worn for dance class or play dates or dress-up or whatnot). And since it bears a striking resemblance to a ballet slipper, but it is, in actuality, a street shoe, then, judging very scientifically from vague reminiscences of my footwear predilections when I was that small, it is one of the little girl's VERY, VERY FAVORITE PAIR OF SHOES IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD AND SHE WEARS THEM EVERY SINGLE DAY - EXCEPT MOOMOO OR NANA OR WHATEVER NEGLIGENT SLATTERN WAS DRAGGING HER TOO QUICKLY TO CATCH THE BUS OR SOMETHING FAILED TO NOTICE THAT IT WAS GONE!!!

Now I must take to my bed. Let’s just pretend it “gives me the vapors” or something like that.