Poodle with a Mohawk

I'm so out of it that I have no idea what a "meme" even is. Sophie's lovely Bouchercon post on Monday was no help at all, and Rachael's delightful essay still leaves me feeling, well, still a little unclear on the concept, a little out of it.

But this is no surprise. A good many of us authors --nearly all, perhaps?-- were hopeless book nerds in high school. I've never really "gotten" the latest meme, much less have I been on the cutting edge...I've never once said, for instance, that "I saw that video when it only had a few hundred hits." I'm the last one on the bandwagon, folks. And I really don't mind my seat in the rear.

About the only time I ever exhibited anything approximating coolness was an awesome T shirt I had the second year of college. It featured Fifi, a poodle, who was "small, black, and mad as hell."

(Check out the copyrighted artwork, by Lynda Barry, here.)

"He knew what people thought of his kind: High strung. Spoiled rotten. French." But once he becomes Poodle with a Mohawk, "You'll never call him Fifi again!"

It was the kind of culturally-loaded humor that young people love: in order to get the joke, you had to know the kind of pampered poodles that were prevalent amongst the suburban folk; you had to understand the political statement implicit in the Mohawk hairstyle; and you had to embrace an ironic way of looking at the world.

These days, I'm lucky to check out the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger (narrated by Randall) at about hit number 17 million. Yes, I said it: 17 million. But check it out...I may be late, but the view from the back is pretty good:


Funny, huh? Wish I still had that Poodle T shirt, though. It was rad. Which meant cool, a very, very long time ago.