Death Mating Call Fetishes Adventures of a Salesman

As promised, here begin The Make-Up Tales; random adventures from the last month or so that leap wildly over the "fit for internet publication bar," set somewhere near their ankles. As you might expect (and my feeble attention span demands) when it comes to the order in which these dramas are regurgitated, chronology has been sexually assaulted in the ear and left for dead...

JUNE 9th: Buy My Beavers!

This is a big one. A whopper. It's so cool that anyone who gets near it breaks out in to commercial-beverage-advertisement-style song, dance, and gayety. Like most things this cool, it begins with a bad idea. This particular bad idea was to wrap up some resources that I didn't have into a trip I couldn't afford so as to sell some shirts that no one would buy. It was a bad idea, but at least it was simple: I would print up some flashy fliers with yuppie Michigan designs on them and drive up the entire west coast of The MotherState, stopping in every tourist-trap t-shirt store in every coastal village to pitch my shirt designs to anyone who would listen. But get this, everyone listened! They were all nods and smiles. It was very CocaCola.



Of course, I could not possibly foresee any of those nods and smiles beforehand, so when it came time to actually carry out this bad idea, I was beginning to think what anyone would hopefully think when they were about to drop a bunch of money in some sort of door-to-door salesman scam, which was that it was a bad idea. In truth, by the time I left Chicago I was developing a profound terror of the prospect of walking in to someone else's store with the intent of doing anything more than buying a lollipop. By the time I reached South Haven a couple hours later and stepped up to the door of the first seasonal kitsch-factory in sight I could scarcely contain my nausea. "This place," said the Irrational Fear Zone of my brain (I.F.Z., roughly 90% by volume, usually concerns itself with booger patrol and public transportation), "is full of bad spirits. Think Neverland Ranch. Bad things are going to happen to you in there." I was fully prepared to side with the rarely-trusty I.F.Z. but Heather, my dependable salesman sidekick, kicked me through the door and face-to-face with the manager. I stumbled, I mumbled, I smiled weakly, I gave them my flyer, I left. It was all pretty painless, and from SH to Holland to Grand Haven to Muskegon to Ludington to Manistee to Onekema to Arcadia it was repeated several times with varying degrees of futility. It seemed that many of these places, friendly as they were, purchased their summer inventory several centuries in advance. On the plus side though, I was learning things, and by the end of the day I got my shpeal down to the point where I would say most of the right things without spontaneously breaking down into tears. Still, it was a good thing that Elberta and, more importantly, The Cabbage Shed lay at the end of our trail for the day. There are few stresses that cannot be cured by Shed IPA, a wet burrito served in an armadillo shell, and the vocal stylings of Gus, crutch-enforced jowl-jiggler of BiZANGO.

Best cover of Party Like it's 1999, EVER.

In the morning we went to some stores in Frankfort. We went to a store called David's Harborside Clothing. We went inside David's Harborside Clothing, spoke with David, made eye contact with David, did not cry, and walked out of David's store with two orders. Two. THAT CRAZY FUCKER BOUGHT SOME OF MY SHIRTS TO PUT IN HIS STORE! My shirts are going to be sold in a store. In Frankfort. My shirts are going to be sold in a retail store in Frankfort called David's Harborside Clothing. That was pretty much enough to send me off the deep end for a good hour or two (think a Coors Light commercial, or Fanta). So after closing the sale at David's we went commercial-beverage-advertisement frolicking at the beach (definitely Fanta), feeding at the Polish joint in Elberta, and consuming at the consignment heaven that is Smokestack Storage (Budweiser).

At length I was able to regain my composure enough to hit the sales trail again, but with one success in the bag it was hard not to give in to the desire to allow the trip to devolve into standard up north sight-seeing and adventuring, so I made sure to include enough of both. We went up to Glen Arbor, with stops at Loon lake and Empire on the way, and then cross county over to Traverse City and up to Charlevoix. Charlevoix probably had the most promising prospect of the bunch (Cindy, of Seasonal kitsch factory #? said she might have room in a couple weeks), but not surprisingly the highlight was the wine and dine. The Villager Pub, followed by a movie and then this was more than enough to erase the memory of any creepy store owners in Traverse City (did I mention the stores inTraverse are creepier than clown shit?), along with one or more World Wars.

After that, we took the back way home, and in the morning met even more nice shop-owners in even more Benzie villages and finally began the journey south to the west to the north to the Chi, with a brief interlude in The Dutchness for some more wining and dining with familiar folks from familiar places.

May I conclude in saying that it was a brutally kick-ass weekend?

And thorough.

Well, not super thorough... I didn't make it as far north as hoped(Harbor Springs), and I did miss a few little guys on the way(St. Joseph, Allegan, Pentwater, et al), but still, don't rain on my parade, you hippie.

EDIT: I almost forgot, we met a porcupine too. He was having a very Big Lebowski moment.

.