Sunday, March 04, 2007

My Fifteen Seconds of Fame

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," animated animism, totem template, vulture Valhalla! If you yearn to dress like a sacred animal or bird and dance madly in a warm bath of light, you are not alone. Have some leftover delicacies from the East Coast Vulture Festival 2007, and let a nearly-martyred missionary tell you how to suffer for your faith.

Catching my legions and legions of readers up on previous posts:

1. Anne agrees to be buzzard mascot for the East Coast Vulture Festival, March 3, 2007. Anne sees this as a means by which to witness to the greatness of the turkey vulture, better known by its Latin name Golden Purifier.

2. Anne orders a rental vulture mascot costume from a company in Akron, Ohio.

3. Anne fusses and frets over whether the company will actually send the costume in time.

4. The company sends the costume in time, but Anne has the flu.

5. The costume looks like a vulture but feels like the kind of armor a well-heeled member of William Wallace's infantry might have found desirable.

6. The breathing hole in the costume is too small and clogged with black paint.

7. Anne has the flu.

8. Anne makes a fateful decision: One must suffer along the winding road to Vulture Valhalla. Anne appears at the East Coast Vulture Festival in the mascot gear and leads the shamanic vulture dance.

9. That was yesterday. Now it's morning after, and Anne feels like one of those old-time missionaries, returned from a long posting in deepest Africa, gaunt and riddled with every sort of exotic wasting illness known to humankind.

It was worth it.

Long will I cherish the memories of the hugs and kisses from the cute little kids at the festival, the respect of my newfound cadre of buzzard-besotten peers, the grudging admiration of my noxious tween, and yes ... (wiping tears) the sight of a rehabilitated turkey vulture, released from a cat carrier back into the wild from whence it came.

I'd lay odds that you could poll every billionaire on the planet and you wouldn't find one who would say he or she had a better March 3, 2007 than I did. The fact that I can't swallow today is a mere trifle.

Here is the best part.

Remember how Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes? I tend to agree, but I think that you had better be picky about how you spend your fifteen minutes of fame. You don't want to be the guy arrested for running out of the stands at Yankee Stadium to dump his mama's ashes where Lou Gehrig used to stand.

I got my fifteen seconds of fame today, and damned proud I am of how I achieved it.

Turned on Philadelphia's Action News this morning for a weather report, and doggoned if they didn't have a 15-second spot about the Vulture Festival. They showed the nature lady releasing the wild vulture. And they showed me, watching at the front of the crowd.

Of course you can't see me, because I'm swathed in 100 pounds of vulture costume, turning blue for lack of oxygen.

But what does that matter? Hoo hah! I'm on T.V.! Famous for the thing I love the most!

I guess by my age it's far too late to pursue a normal existence.

There's a serious lesson to be learned from all this East Coast Vulture Festival stuff. First, if you're open-minded and a situation arises (such as a vulture infestation in your borough), you'll decide to view the nuance as an opportunity, not a menace. Then, just as a joke, you'll see if you can make a few bucks off your pesky problem. You get a few friends together, delegate some authority, and voila! A clear profit of $4000 in two years for the pet nature projects you want to endorse in your community!

Pictures of the event will be posted as they become available.

In Vultures We Trust,

ANNE JOHNSON

5 comments:

Interrobang said...

Normal existences are overrated, as near as I can tell. I'm not 100% sure because I've never had one, though.

Case in point: Normal people go the Bahamas and swim in the ocean and get sand in their bathing suits. I go to the Bahamas and swim in the ocean and get bitten by a fish.

BBC said...

I guess I had my fifteen seconds of fame back when I drove race cars and was a well known mechanic in town.

Okay, years of fame, but only in a little area, it's not like I got world famous.

Or maybe it was when I owned a parts house in Utah and put out a newsletter and started a business association and started pulling the town together.

Or maybe it was when I moved to Montana, joined the civic club and put on the first ever demolition derby they had ever had there to raise a lot of money for their projects.

It doesn't matter I guess, it's all soon forgotten. We are just specks of dust it seems.

Hope you are feeling better, the flu is never fun, I wonder why everyone call cold bugs the flu though.

I had a true flu once, I couldn't do anything for a week but lie on the couch and hurt like hell.

Nice that you had a good time.

Erik said...

You might be interested in this - the Carolina Raptor Center near Charlotte, NC (http://www.carolinaraptorcenter.org/) has an adoption program where people can "adopt" rescued vultures and other raptors (We're lucky enough to live in an area with a high concentration of black and turkey vultures).

Tennessee Jed said...

Hope you are feeling better soon.

I am glad you got your fifteen seconds in, even if you were feeling like ca ca.

Rosie said...

Truly you have suffered for your faith now. Traising around with the flu in a 60 pound vulture outfit fits right up there in my book with beating yourself into a fit of exstasy through the streets of Campania.

Damn, girl.