Monday, February 2, 2009

Off My Chest and On to Hers - The Punky Boobster story

by Aaron Mystery

[Note: Two unfinished blog entries from last week will not be published because they're outdated. The BATEE multiverse (aka Suckermouth) channel at YouTube will go "live" again on February 11, or shortly thereafter. But don't count it as a moral victory for YouTube yet... bwah! ha! ha!]

I grew up in the 1980s, which is starting to make me feel old, until I compare it to the Ace the Zombie, who grew up in the fourteenth century. But I digress, one of my favorite tv shows growing up was (wait for it...) Punky Brewster, the little spazzy girl about my age who seemed so cool I wanted to hang out with her. I watched the shows for years until it went off the air. Oh, well, I've never had an interest in watching a single episode since. There was also the cartoon series, including the episode when Punky gets turned into an adult (and of course turned back). I'll get you, Glomer!

When the actress that played the lead started showing up here and there a couple years later (including a Saved by the Bell episode) she had a nice big pair of boobs! Wow! She'd grown up and wow! Yeah!

Then she got a breast reduction and got married. Oh, no. No, no, no.

For years now it's haunted me. This wasn't breast "reconstructive" surgery, this was medical malpractice. This was... wrong. Why would anyone do that to themselves, throw away something others wish for or even pay for? Oh, Punky, how could you do this?

Your career is now more dead than Ace the Zombie, my dear, and thank goodness. I've always maintained that natural beauty (outside of CG and cartoons, of course) is well... beautiful. You turned that on its head: You took something extraordinary and made it ordinary (with scars, no less). But it is your life: Maybe your back hurt like hell (my back hurts too, but since I'm a thin male I don't think I need a breast reduction) or maybe you thought a big rack would keep you from getting serious (snicker!) parts.

I don't mean to be so coarse... You are a human being. And the character is the character. Your body is your body. But the beauty is I do three things particularly well... social satire, parody, and B.E. These things allow me to escape the shortcomings of not being able to get over what somebody I never knew from a show I no longer watch did to her body over ten years ago.

For those of you who have suffered as I have, Punky Boobster is your catharsis. This cartoon (available as a teaser at http://dailymotion.com/suckermouth or in full at Suckermouth with a paid subscription) is the new canon, the new story, the happy ending we never got.

At the end of the comedy movie Hamlet 2, the playwrite has himself forgiving a representation of his own father, and obviously feels a huge sense of relief through this scene. Well, in the paraphrased and conveniently modified words of Hamlet 2: "I forgive you, Punky, I forgive you."