Object No. 90 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Ehrenreich, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $50.]

I pull a marble from your skull each time we kiss. “Give it back,” you say, each time.

“Darling,” I say. “Baby,” I say. “No.”

I put the marble in my pocket. Later, I will hide it with the others. But not now, because now you’re watching. Now you’re getting mad. I knew you would, and now you’re doing it. You cross your arms. Your features droop. Not just your lips but your eyelids and ears and the cleft ball of your chin. All of it droops. I laugh at you. “Come here, Droopy,” I say, and I try to kiss you, but you pull away.

“Give it back,” you say.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

“Give it back,” you say, again.

“Each marble is a moon,” I say, “but the moon is not a marble. Did you know that?”

“Give it back.”

“I just read an interesting article about a hunchback,” I say. “They put him on display in a museum until he withered and when they did an autopsy they found that his hump was filled with marbles. And they marveled at the marbles. Don’t you think that’s unfair?”

“Give it back,” you say.

“Give it back give it back give it back. Come up with something better. Think a bit. Ask yourself: how would Professor Noam Chomsky respond in a situation like this? Or Beyoncé. What would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do?”

“Give it back.”

“You are a funny bird,” I say. “But I’m bored of this. I’m going for a walk.” I put my shoes and my jacket on and I go outside, but I don’t really go for a walk. I just stand beside the door and count to 35,000. Then I go back inside. You’re tidying up. I can tell that you’re still angry because you’re tidying up and because your nose is drooping as you do it. “Are you hungry?” I say, but you don’t answer. “Is there still chicken in the fridge?” I say, but you say nothing, so I open the fridge to look. The chicken is gone. How could you eat all that chicken? Did you give it away?

From the other room, you speak. “How was your walk?” you say, placing the remote control beside the other remote controls, arranging them attractively.

“It was lovely,” I say. “I ran into Vladimir Putin in the form of a crow. We’re Facebook friends. He sang the most beautiful song. It was called, ‘Give it back.’” I sing it for you, swinging my hips like a metronome gone mad. “Give it back, give it back, give it back now. Give it back, give it back, give it back now.” And I take your hand and pull you to me because I want to be close to you and I want you to dance with me and to love me as much as I love everything in this world. But your hand is balled tight and your body is stiff and you’re not drooping at all anymore. Instead you’re crying. You’re covering your face. “Oh baby,” I say, “Don’t be sad.” And I unball your hand and squeeze your fingers and run the fingers of my other hand across your cold and teary face. “There’s nothing,” I say, “but nothing, to be sad for.” And I kiss your fingers and your dry lips and with my free hand I reach up and I stroke your hair and I poke about until I feel the bulge and then I dig in with my nails and pull another marble from your skull.

Object No. 89 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Maud Newton, has ended. Original price: 59 cents. Final price: $24.50.]

This astonishing “Cracker Barrel” artifact appears to be a souvenir of modern vintage, representing a down-home North American restaurant-and-country-store chain that upholds Christian values by refusing to hire gay people. In fact, the object dates to the Bronze Age and was unearthed last week in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, on what is believed by several prominent archaeologists to be the site of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Alongside the artifact lay a charred cuneiform tablet that listed all five towns of the Pentapolis (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar) that were destroyed by the Lord with fire and brimstone while Lot and his family fled.

As scholars at the site quickly translated the tablet, they discovered a parable that directly contradicted the reasons given in Genesis for the devastation God wreaked on the inhabitants of those late, sinful cities. The Sodomites, in this account, were punished not for gay sex, but for failing to offer the proper hospitality to several strangers, who were homosexual men, and for trying to force their daughters on the men. The Sodomites had barred the visitors from their homes, bars, and restaurants, engaged in discriminatory hiring practices, and invented and frequently employed the insult “faygele.” Same-sex unions, under any name, were prohibited.

Enraged that the people had apparently failed to apprehend the full meaning of the rainbow promise he had made to Noah after the flood, the Lord waved His hand. Volcanic lava rained down, killing everyone but Lot and his family — and a few Cracker Barrel employees, who escaped, carrying this artifact with them.

On initial inspection, strange markings on the underside of the cuneiform tablet appeared to tie the Cracker Barrel escapees to The Illuminati, but this linkage could not be verified, for, although it was handled with utmost care and in accordance with the strictest archaeological preservation methods, the tablet turned to salt the moment the initial transcription was complete. Then a ram began to baa nearby, its horn caught in a bush. Seconds later a rainbow appeared in the sky. Fundamentalist groups in the United States have now denounced the rainbow as a sign of the End Times. They continue to frequent Cracker Barrel, however.

Object No. 87 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Merrill Markoe, has ended. Original price: 59 cents. Final price: $21.80.]

Any image that has been carefully placed in an antique gold frame embossed with angels and laurel wreathes becomes transformed in to something elevated and celestial. “All you need to know about this old person/building/animal/plate of food/scenic vista/bleeding martyr is that it is sacred to me and  holds a very special place in my heart,” the frame seems to tell us.

But what if you are the kind of person who wishes to remember the bad times? You believe there is wisdom in being surrounded by cautionary tales—reminders of your most fatal blunders. How else to remind yourself to never again respond too quickly to a seemingly harmless social invitation and risk becoming mired in an evening so vile it undermines your sense of self worth? So you bring home a memento of that detestable event: a whimsical cocktail stirrer or a personalized matchbook. But where do you put these wretched things? Or the snapshot you still have of that person you dated who stole your credit card and talked with a phony English accent? Let’s not forget that former best friend of yours who calls to brag about the good things that happen to him by disguising them as disappointments, tragedies and inconveniences. “I’m so depressed,” he says, “That deal I closed has moved me in to a much higher tax bracket.” Then he leaves you with a faux ironic  autographed photo of him standing in between Spencer and Heidi. You need a place to put that unpleasant souvenir of friendship gone sour. One that will admonish you never to take his phone calls again. Ditto the business card left behind by the tech guy who came to fix one broken USB port, disassembled your entire Internet connection, refused all blame, and insisted on getting his full fee.

Well, some people put these things at the center of dartboards. But that has become a cliché. And why run the risk of attracting unwanted dart games? No, when you want to demean an image, hold it up to spite and ridicule and single it out as something worthy of scorn, you want a frame that conjures a rage like the one that overwhelmed that Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush. You want a frame that says “I step on you with my bare dirty feet.”

This poorly articulated caricature of a foot wearing a flimsy multicolored flip-flop sits atop a frame that boldly declares, “Whatever I have enshrined here is something I hold in contempt. He/she/it is sub-par in every way: cheap, shallow, unimaginative, disposable, as void of any real value as the very worst, most despicable gift catalog. And just like the frame itself, they too are under the false impression that they are adorable and a welcome addition wherever they go.” May they eat every meal for the rest of their lives from a plastic plate festooned with Santa’s adorable helpers, listening to a never-ending loop of the opening line of “Up, Up and Away,” by the Fifth Dimension.

Object No. 77 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Nick Asbury, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $11.61. ]

Kenny is a funny clown

Kenny is a funny clown.
He sees the whole world upside-down.
Kenny is my best friend.

The day before Kenny was born, he said
“I bet I can live life standing on me ’ead!”
Kenny is from the North of England.

Kenny sometimes says to me:
“I am the King of Comedy!
Just don’t ask me to do stand-up!”

It’s funnier when Kenny says it.

Kenny’s favourite food
is upside-down cake.
Except he calls it right-way-up cake.

Kenny likes to chat up the ladies.
He says “Hey! I’ve fallen for you baby!”
and the ladies all fall head over heels
and Kenny says “Now you know how it feels!”

Kenny says he has to move on.
“It’s time I stood on my own two feet,
paid my way in this world,
met some new people, maybe a girl!”

Kenny will make someone very happy.
He’s a stand-up guy for an upside-down chappy.
He cheers you up on the days you’re down
and turns any frown upside-down.

Kenny has also asked me to mention
that he is an expert breakdancer.

So long Kenny! See you around.
Keep your feet in the clouds
and your head on the ground.

Object No. 75 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Teddy Wayne, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $20.50.]

At the Ramada Hotel and Conference Center Qualcomm Stadium San Diego, on a June weekend in 2007, eighty-two men and women from Sealy, the mattress giant, converged for their national sales meeting.  Sealy was falling behind in the burgeoning memory-mattress market and its finances were, in industry parlance, “sagging.”  One right rectangular prism made of Lucite with a “Catch the Wave” decal, half-filled with viscous liquid, was awarded to Richard Caulkins, a mustachioed sales manager from Omaha whose branches had outperformed all others in the previous quarter.  Upon his return to Nebraska he gave it to his eight-year-old son, who sloshed the liquid around for a few minutes and unsuccessfully attempted to crack the prism’s clear walls before getting bored and running out of the house to play.

But its history is immaterial.  You will receive the Lucite prism.  You will marvel at its viscosity.  You will think of a motor oil commercial from your youth touting its product’s ability to resist viscosity and fight thermal breakdowns.  You will place the prism on your coffee table as a kitschy, ironic gesture.  You will wonder if you are too old and bourgeois to be decorating ironically.  When friends come by, they will, in puzzlement, ask if you received the prism from work.  You will titter, explain that its placement is ironic, and nervously gauge their reactions.  They will smile politely and tilt the prism’s liquid around a few times, then return to the previous conversation, which will be about work problems, or sexual problems, or interpersonal problems.  These are problems with which you are familiar from either previous discussions or your own identification with them.  You will recite rote solutions or expressions of sympathy from muscle memory, meanwhile casting a surreptitious glance at the still-sloshing prism, watching its encased waves that cannot be caught, thinking about thermal breakdowns, closing your eyes and dreaming about diving into the bracing Pacific, imagining the Caulkins son’s escape from his father’s suburban row house with the aimless adventure only children possess, and, when you open your eyes, the liquid’s viscosity will have brought itself to rest, thickly, silently, within its six clear walls.

Object No. 68 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Katchor, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $42.]

This beautiful, but slightly worn, example of early 20th century porcelain “bookware” was manufactured and distributed free-of-charge along with newly printed copies of the Maine Revised Statutes Annotated — a dreary compendium of state laws.

This example, formed in the style of a small, shallow aperitif or snack dish, holds fifty salted peanuts. It was meant to encourage lawyers and public advocates to acquaint themselves with the latest revisions to state law. On one dishful of peanuts, a reader could make his way through several Titles and Chapters of the book.

This example of “bookware” cemented the connection between justice and eating within the professional classes of Maine. Each chapter was keyed to an estimated number of peanuts. The worn edge of the dish is evidence of the late-night reading of an overweight small-town lawyer.

Title 17, Chapter  131: MISCELLANEOUS CRIMES
17 §3951. Abandonment of airtight containers (REPEALED) 15 peanuts
17 §3952. Dangerous knives (REPEALED) 23 peanuts
17 §3953. Disorderly conduct (REPEALED) 8 peanuts
17 §3954. Disturbance of public meetings (REPEALED) 12 peanuts
17 §3955. Dumping rubbish on another’s land (REPEALED) 15 peanuts
17 §3956. Electric fences: 8 peanuts
17 §3957. Failure to report treatment of gunshot wounds (REPEALED): 18 peanuts
17 §3958. False alarms and reports (REPEALED): 9 peanuts
17 §3960. Peeking in nighttime (REPEALED) 34 peanuts
17 §3961. Placing obstructions on traveled road (REPEALED): 15 peanuts
17 §3962. Regulation of radio waves; disturbing reception (REVISED) 8 peanuts
17 §3963. Riding with naked scythe (REPEALED): 17 peanuts
17 §3965. Defacement of state facilities; possession of paint (REPEALED) 7 peanuts
17 §3966. Animals in food stores (REVISED) 12 peanuts
17 §2904. Use of phonographs for profane or obscene language (REPEALED): 45 peanuts

The Maine Revised Statues are now available online.

Detail.

Object No. 67 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Klam, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.75. ]

I acquired this object at a flea market in the parking lot of a bilingual high school. Its little hands are smooth flippers. I believe it to be quite valuable, possibly antique, based on dates of patents listed on the ornate bronze panel on the inside door. Chinese in origin. Solid cast iron. Quite heavy. Designed to resemble the lead character of the short lived American cartoon, “Chucky the Chicken.” I never saw that show. There are knockoffs out there, and research indicates that knockoffs are made of brass or cheap plastic, but this one is well built, from original specs.

You may keep it in your car. You may keep it in your home. You may carry it on your person.

Be warned. There is a loud clicking sound coming from the control module.

For a while I kept this in my glove compartment. The original instruction manual mentions that the magnetic field it emits can change traffic lights from red to green. THIS DOES NOT WORK. Also, you will cause a pile up!

If you decide to keep it by your bed (as I did) and begin seeing colorful lights reflected on the walls and windows as you try to sleep, DO NOT WORRY AS THE OBJECT IS OPERATING NORMALLY.

DO NOT touch it or disrupt the cycle as this will cause IRREPAIRABLE HARM and may give you a POWERFUL ELECTRIC SHOCK. KEEP AWAY FROM CHUCKY UNLESS INSTRUCTED BY CHUCKY HIMSELF.

• Phase 1/Initial Phase: Transmission of messages.
• Phase 2/Functional Phase: Chucky cycling normally.
• Phase 3/Unity Phase: Walls bleed beautiful colors.
• Phase 4/Perfected Phase: Controller/controlled.
• Phase 5/Paradise Phase: Identity of Supreme Dictator revealed.

Chucky said to me, “HELLO MY LITTLE FRIEND. I am your GOD. Shift administrative tasks to your REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY. Prepare for LOVE SYMBOL.

Ha ha. And well we know what that love SYMBOL is now, DO WE NOT?

Certainly this object may have other uses. Keep it as an antique vase or planter, or with slight modification use as liquor locker, gun cabinet, bomb safe, champagne cooler, cocktail pitcher, etcetera. Dental detail alone is worth the price. Cannot verify that all parts are included. Cast iron is in excellent condition, however: do not microwave!!

Do not touch the outer shell with your tongue. Do not form contractions. FOLLOW THE MANUAL. Do not attempt modifications. Try to keep the dust out of his middle. CLEAN the inside WITH YOUR TONGUE if your TONGUE is long ENOUGH. THIS IS NOT HARD TO DO if you stick your tongue out. FARTHER. A LITTLE FARTHER.

N.B.: Cast iron may actually be ceramic. Bronze panel and inside door may be difficult/impossible to locate. Instruction manual not included.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Sloane Crosley, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $57.66.]

Alec Baldwin never had a Bar Mitzvah. The non-fact of this, the bloated lack in the calendar of his mind, haunted him. How could he be a sterling example of manhood to little Billy, Danny and Stevie if he wasn’t even a man himself?

Then, in 2002, Alec attended the International Conference of Music and Theatre in Chicago, Illinois where the keynote speaker was one Michael Jackson. The conference, previously held in The Drake hotel, had moved to the Marriott. But Alec, who had ignored e-mails regarding the venue change, showed up at The Drake.  Furious, he called his then-4-year-old daughter just to bitch about the situation.  That’s when he heard someone shout his name. It was Michael Jackson himself.

Michael too had gotten the right address wrong. Or the wrong address right.  He urged Alec to join him in the bar, where they ordered sidecars and a ramekin of Kahlua for Michael. The two men, as they would come to find out over the next few hours, both turned 13 in 1971.  As celebrities do, they kinda sorta knew each other from being famous. Though one was more so than the other.  In 1971, Jackson went solo.  In 1971, Baldwin walked to the 7-11, got a Slurpee, and drank it while doing his homework.

As the night stretched on, it came out that Michael had also never been Bar Mitzvahed. He also wasn’t Jewish, a fact which saddened Michael almost as much as it did Alec.

“Let’s do it tonight,” said Michael, dipping his pinky into the Kahlua and sucking on it, “let’s have a joint, belated Bar Mitzvah. I can arrange for us to have a rabbi and a caricaturist here in 10 minutes.”

“Tonight?” chuckled Alec. “Who’s bad?” He shook his head.

In the end, they compromised. If they couldn’t have an actual Bar Mitzvah, they at least wanted the trappings. Maybe a sombrero or a pair of boxers that read “I Danced My Pants Off At Michael & Alec’s Bar Mitzvah!” They journeyed to the gift shop, and found exactly what they were looking for: A whole shelf of rainbow sand-filled horses. Beautiful plastic stallions with long necks that reached above the snow globes and miniature Sears Towers. They each bought one and took them outside.

“Now what?” said Alec.

“Now,” said Michael, unscrewing the cap of his rainbow steed, “we write two things on slips of paper: our hopes and dreams and how we think we’re going to die.”

“Isn’t that three things?”

“And then we put the paper in this horse and shake it down to the middle and bury it in our backyards, and say a Jewish prayer when we do.”

“Jesus, you’ve really thought this out.”

“It’s just how my mind works,” said Michael, ripping a piece of scrap paper from his day planner.

He borrowed a pen from the doorman, which Alec kept. Alec finished first.

“Caught on your hopes and dreams, huh?” said Alec.

“No,” Michael scribbled solemnly, “it’s just that I know exactly how I’m going to die and I want to get every detail in there.”

And so they shook their notes into the sand and parted ways, promising to bury their horses.  Which Alec did as soon as he got home. But Michael, whose motivations were more about a good party than a spiritual reckoning, completely forgot about the entire episode. He wasn’t even unpacking his own suitcase by this time.  A Neverland butler took the sand horse down to the basement, and threw it in a cardboard box marked “MICHAEL’S RANDOM CRAP.”

There it sat for 7 years, gathering dust. I know, it was in a box. But whatever, there was dust. It’s a big house to clean. The sand horse was not among the pricey Access Hollywood-exposed gems of the Neverland auction. It was simply overlooked. This is not only a beautiful specimen of kitsch, but it contains the hopes, dreams, and death visions of Michael Jackson. The sand, it should be noted, has never been poured out.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Tom Bartlett, has ended. Original price: $4. Final price: $15.50.]

From June 1996 to February 1999 I worked as a manager at a well-known electronic supply retailer in a mostly vacant strip mall on the outskirts of a medium-sized metropolitan area located in the southeastern United States. I don’t say this to brag but simply because it is a fact like the inevitability of death or the importance of placing a plastic weather boot on exposed coax cable to prevent moisture seepage.

During that time I lived in a 900-square-foot two-bedroom apartment overlooking a popular name-brand eatery famous for its spicy boneless chicken with the assistant manager for the same well-known electronic supply retailer who, for the purposes of this description, I will refer to as AMFTSWKESR. AMFTSWKESR and I spent our days fielding inquiries from a continuous procession of would-be technology users who wondered either a) why a 3.5mm plug could not be inserted into a 2.5mm jack or b) if the computer came with the Internet already on it or if that cost extra.

To these conundrums we would respond, “You make a point” or “That is a question.” Deeming their points “interesting” or their questions “good” seemed to us a violation of certain ideals which, while not expressly stated, were understood to be sacrosanct. In the evenings AMFTSWKESR and I would perform a cursory inventory, place the large bills in the downstairs safe, and drive my fuel-efficient two-door to the aforementioned popular name-brand eatery where we would order spicy boneless chicken and act out our favorite customer encounters from that day. Then we would return to our apartment, plug in the item pictured above, and stare at it transfixed until one or both of us passed out on the thrift-store couch, our nametags still affixed to our wrinkled knit shirts.

In November of 1998 AMFTSWKESR moved to the midwestern United States to be close to a curly haired woman he met in a chat room for people with a shared interest in a commercially unsuccessful science fiction film from the 1980s. The pictured item belonged to AMFTSWKESR, but he left it behind because he thought I might get more use out of it, a gesture intended to indicate that our roughly two-and-a-half-year friendship had been equally meaningful to him. Or that is what I took it to indicate.

Minus AMFTSWKESR’s presence at this particular branch of the well-known electronic supply retailer the position became unbearable and I tendered my resignation shortly thereafter. In the intervening decade I have held a series of nearly identical jobs and lived in a number of nearly identical apartments and yet it all feels like a pathetic foreign replica of that short-lived period, an assertion which is either a) a reminder that the days you’re living now may be as close to halcyon as you’ll ever come or b) a testament to my inexplicable fondness for a seemingly unremarkable and long-since-ended chapter of my admittedly non-noteworthy existence.

Some may wonder why I would offer this corded totem for sale to the general public or why I would find it necessary to dwell on my personal work history rather than more pertinent information as to the item’s current condition and functionality. They may, for instance, ask: What is it? To which I must reply: That is a question.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Doug Dorst, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $193.50.]

Figurine of St. Vralkomir (glass cover not included)

This is an icon of the fourteenth-century saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing. Handcrafted in a snowbound convent by the nimble-footed Sisters of the Vralkomirian Order, it was given to my grandmother—then a nine-year-old girl—as she boarded the ship that would take her to America from Dnobst, a narrow pie-wedge of land bounded by the Dnobst River, the Grkgåt Mountains, and the Great Western Fence of Count Pyør the Litigious.

Vralkomir was a competent cobbler, but he was brusque and taciturn, conversing only to the extent he was required to for business. His fellow citizens found him odd, and they would hurry back out into the year-round cold as quickly as they could. Some said his towering jet-black hat, which he’d knitted of his own hair, would trigger vertigo in those who stared up at it for too long. Many were annoyed by his incessant tuneless humming.

In the autumn of 1347, in response to a perceived slight from a Dnobstian maiden, the recently enthroned Tsar Nÿrdrag the Irascible (also known as “The Cowbird Tsar,” a Scandinavian foundling whom the previous Tsar and Tsarina unknowingly raised as their own) issued an edict banning fire in Dnobst. His armies confiscated every piece of flint and all the available kindling. When winter blew in, it was as cruel as Nÿrdrag himself. Icy gusts sent massive musk-elk rolling out of the forest like tumbleweeds. It snowed for weeks on end. Desperate and frostbitten, the townspeople (minus Vralkomir) huddled in the mayor’s house, which at least still had a roof. The temperature kept dropping. Death was coming, and they could do nothing but wait.

From a high window, someone saw Vralkomir leave his shop, glance around the empty village square, then trudge into the forest. He returned hauling a freshly cut tree. In the square, he sawed the wood into discs like the one you see on the icon. Vralkomir then hopped onto one of the discs and began dancing, dancing, dancing to the tuneless music in his head. He danced faster and faster. The villagers watched as he wheeled and spun and tappatapped, his legs and feet a blur in the subarctic gloom. A plume of smoke rose from under his feet, and he kept dancing, and then there was more smoke, and he danced on, and soon the wooden disc was ablaze. Vralkomir leapt to the next disc and set it alight, and the next, and the next, and the Dnobstians came out and gathered round the fires, drinking in the precious warmth, happy to be alive. The bearded man danced all winter, they say, as no one else in the village could duplicate his feat of terpsichorean ignition, and he died of exhaustion in mid-April, a beloved martyr. Some say he had stitched contraband flints into his soles; others claim he lit the fire with dance alone. My grandmother preferred the latter, and so do I.

My grandmother said that on frigid and moonless winter nights, effigies of St. Vralkomir may come to life and begin dancing, throwing sparks from their wooden pedestals. This was why she always kept the icon under a glass cover (which stylishly followed the contours of the saint’s mighty hair-hat). Unfortunately, I am a clumsy person, and I broke the glass last weekend while dusting. My wife now insists that I sell it, calling it “at best, a tacky, dust-collecting tchotchke, and at worst, a tacky, dust-collecting fire hazard.” There is no reasoning with her; she is descended from an unimaginative people who know nothing of heroes.

I hope someone will give St. Vralkomir the home he deserves. The icon is probably not a fire hazard, although for obvious reasons I can make no express guarantee.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Rob Baedeker, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.82.]

Baron Von Blauheimer “Muscle Dove” Statuette

This is a porcelain statuette of the Baron Von Blauheimer holding a “peace dove” on his cocked fist.

The statuette dates from the 1980s, but it is modeled after a real historical figure from an earlier time — the 1970s. The man is my uncle, Ray-Ray “The Baron” Von Blauheimer, and he is depicted here in his full baron regalia, which doubled as his only clothes.

In the 1970s it was still rare for a grown man to go to work in a lace cravat and petticoat breeches, especially if that man, like Ray-Ray, worked as a garbage collector for the City of Newark, NJ.

Ray-Ray was a bundle of contradictions: sensitive but hard-edged; coquettish yet vengeful; fastidious but filthy. A compassionate civil rights activist, he was also a bodybuilder who delighted in beating up hippies.

This statuette represents Ray-Ray’s attempt to reconcile two sides of his personality. The cocked fist is a symbol of the fight-ready posture he adopted so many times at pool halls, punk-rock concerts, and fondue orgies in the ’70s, while the white dove atop his hand represents his message of peace. As Ray would say, “It’s up to you, friend. Give peace a chance… or taste the Five Knucklemen of Von Blauheimer!”

Uncle Ray-Ray ordered this statuette of himself through a Chinese toy company whose advertisement he found in the back of a Beetle ‘n’ Bonsai magazine. The statuette was modeled after a full-size chainsaw sculpture self-portrait that Ray-Ray made one night when he was loaded on strawberry daiquiris. He sent the photo to the company, Wen Hong Toy, and they produced the custom miniature. The paint — the matching blue touches on the shoes and eyes, the brown strokes on the moustache and eyebrows, and the faint blush on the cheeks — was added by Ray-Ray himself, on another night when he got shellacked and weepy on frozen mango margaritas.

This item is in “Very Fine” to “Very Horrible” condition, depending on your values.

There is a small chip in the dove’s head from when Uncle Ray-Ray threw the statuette at the television during Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural address.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Adam Davies, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.]

Authentic

MR. YODELS

Love Totem

The “Sylvia St. Etienne” edition

This is the only witness to — or, some say, the cause of — the tragic death of
legendary chanteuse and muse to famous Ecuadorian footballer

Francisco Chavarria

NOT AN IMITATION!

Condition

The artifact is in good condition.  Some slight damage, consistent with the violence of the wreckage, on the Tres Marias rabbit headpiece and on the hand-painted ovoid eyes.  Otherwise the piece is exquisitely preserved, including (as required by the folk magic tradition) Mr. Chavarria’s “plasma donation.”

The Mr. Yodels Tradition:

Jacob Tauxe, the notorious “Swiss Voodoo Houngan” from Bern, designed the original line of ceramic Mr. Yodels figurines employed by frustrated suitors as love totems.  By a feat of acoustic engineering yet to be explained satisfactorily, all custom-made Mr. Yodels figurines produce a distinctive upper-and-lower register song — the “love yodel” — when placed at an open window by which the loved one walks, provoking powerful spontaneous feelings of pair-bonding, veneration, and leghumpery.

Dangerous and unsanctioned Do-It-Yourself models — those made without knowledge of the proper techniques or precautions — are rumored to be responsible for the unions of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, Woody Allen and relatives, Elizabeth Taylor et al., Chrysler and Daimler, and others.

The “Sylvia St. Etienne” Mr. Yodels:

Caracas, 1956.  The fiery Ecuadorian striker Francisco Chavarria meets the legendary Hollywood songstress Sylvia St. Etienne, best known for her sultry interpretations of “Ashes in my D-Cup,” “Cabana in Urbana,” and “That Was It?”

For seven glorious, champagne-drenched, strawberry-inserting, mogul-free weeks the couple was inseparable — until Ms. St. Etienne met the mogul Sven “Big Krona” Uggla.  Then they separated.

Heartbroken, and publicly humiliated, Mr. Chavarria vowed to get her back, but Ms. St. Etienne was — as they say in Monte Carlo — “avec mogul.”  With no other recourse to intercourse, the jilted footballer traveled to Switzerland and implored Mr. Tauxe to fashion for him the most powerful of all Mr. Yodelses. But the Swiss Voodoo priest, bitter over Mr. Chavarria’s last-second game-winning header over the Swiss, refused.

Desperate, Mr. Chavarria fashioned his own Mr. Yodels, ignorant of the necessary protocols, and tied it underneath the passenger seat of Big Krona’s BMW 507 roadster, thinking, you know: The windows will be down. Gotta work.

Only ten hours later, after Sylvia St. Etienne gave the last performance of her life, singing the hits from “Hurry Up, These Sheets Itch and I’m Sweating,” “Waiter! There’s a Jackass in my Demitasse!” and “Side-Saddle Won’t Work,” she drove off into the night with Big Krona and plunged to her death in a mountain gorge.

All that remains of the great singer are her treasured recordings—and, now, available for the first time to the public, from the estate of Mr. Abernathy Hastings of Newport, this gloriously preserved Mr. Yodels.

Look at the eyes:  you can almost see what Francisco Chavarria saw.

Witness the ears:  you can almost hear what Francisco Chavarria heard.

Observe the mouth:  you can fit a Bud Kinger in that thing.

Reserve set low by request of the estate, this auction represents a rare opportunity to own the last remaining vestige of one of the 20th century’s most tragic love stories.

It may also possibly crack walnuts.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by James Parker, has closed. Original price: $1.25. Final price: $15.53 ]

“You know, of course,” said the periodontist, as he bore down with his scalpel, “that Nancy Pelosi is insane?”

Floyd Haruspex, gaping and nearly prone in the chair, made no answer. The question had been rhetorical anyway.

“She is, excuse me, batshit crazy… Any pain?”

“Ngh-ngh,” answered Floyd, emphatically. Halfway through this operation to fix his receding gums and he was feeling no pain at all. The left side of his mouth and face had in fact become a miraculous region of pure psychology. No sensations, only… impressions, intuitions, insights. Ah, Novocaine.

“Let me know,” said the periodontist, whose name was Dr. Soundgarden.

But now Floyd like a saint was gazing beyond this earthly scene, gazing over Dr. Soundgarden’s meaty white-clad shoulder and out through the window. Rainy ocean sky. Undifferentiated sub-glare. A vast range of numbness. Somewhere out there was Diagnostic Jones with his pack of Harley-riding Illuminati, all pushing their hogs through the last frontier of mechanical endurance en route to the big kahuna, the king burrito, the cosmic giggle-osaurus. And Prima Materia, alchemical sex-siren. Tying one on in some cheesy maritime bar no doubt, with several new friends of the fishing or dope-running persuasion. Would he, Floyd, ever get the chance to dissolve and coagulate with her — to produce with her the philosopher’s stone? Yeah, right.

“What’s happening with this country right now, I’d like to go to sleep for ten years.” Dr. Soundgarden was talking again, while his hands in their bloodied plastic gloves made squinching sounds in Floyd’s mouth. “Sleep for ten years, wake up, maybe things’d be back to normal. Know what I’m saying?”

Floyd inclined an eyebrow à la Errol Flynn. He was at the shoreline, and some sort of John Bircher was fixing his gumline. Karma was a pretzel sometimes. And he hadn’t even begun to think about the kitty plate. Why had someone left it in his car last night, this little milk-saucer with the face of a cat painted on it? He had floundered heavily into the driver’s seat, with the bar-reek on him, to find it propped on the dashboard like a rebuke. The cat was ginger-ish, with a distant, unreadable expression. “And the same to you, partner,” Floyd had mumbled, tossing it onto the back seat and scraping at the ignition. He’d never owned a cat. He didn’t like cats. Which was not to say that he didn’t understand the cat thing: he knew any number of ex-radicals and tired misanthropes whose single connection to the world-as-commonly-experienced was via some sullen feline. Barney Breaks, for example, the PI he’d hired to spy on his first wife. Pissed-off to the core. A disenchantment with humanity that was truly cosmic. Now there was a cat guy.

Could it have been Barney who left the kitty plate in Floyd’s ’66 Chevy Impala? As a message that his darkest apprehensions re Prima Materia were about to be realized?

But Barney had had joined a cult three years ago: the Joy People, out of Humboldt County. Never been heard of since, poor bastard.

Besides, the cat on the plate wasn’t giving a message. If anything, he was withholding a message. That’s what cats did, right? Unlike everything else, they refused to signify. And Floyd, in the periodontist’s chair, began to shake with unphraseable laughter.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Sharpe, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.]

This is the statue of the mule that I have sculpted by my hands, but if you are the serious person about the hand-sculpted statues, also serious when you are knowing how to feel the deep meaning in Life, then you will see that is not really the statue of the mule. I will not be able to say what the statue is truly because then I will be embarrassing and you will be embarrassing too if you are the serious person about it. “Not all of the things are to be talked about in the computer.” But the mule is also to show how I am having many nations that I am coming from in my family background.

I, the selling person, am Hans Mifune, Artist. What is the Artist? It is the ancient river running in the new bed. (Also I do not always feel like getting out of the bed! Because my bedroom is small!) I must sell my beautiful artworks for that is sometimes only the way that the other people of the world can see my artworks and also then sometimes I can eat some things that are not the sandwiches with sugar and lard. And even these sandwiches sometimes do not have sugar and bread on them!

I am finishing this selling with saying how the “ashes” in the sculpture is because I have some pain to have so many nations at once as the location where I am coming from in life. The pain is not because of my many birth origins “in and to itself,” it is because of the humans that live “in the world of them.” I live “in the world of us.” I hope that you live “also in the world of us.”

You will have also the penny in the photograph of the mule for the same price that you bid the most to the statue of the mule plus shipping and handling.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Greenman, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $32.08.]

This object is best known from its appearance in the 1939 film No News From The Navy, a comedy starring James Wilton as a hapless midshipman who cannot set aside his seafaring ways, even when he is confined to dry land as a result of an injury.  Wilton’s character (who is called, simply, “Sailor”) competes for the affection of a young woman named Evelyn (Mary Hannan) despite the opposition of her father (Gordon Howard) and a larger, determined suitor (Kenneth Lopp). The film is a second-tier comedy, but there is one classic scene in which Sailor shaves before taking Evelyn out on a date. He is clearly accustomed to shaving aboard his ship, and as a result, he is constantly attempting to regain his balance, despite the fact the floor is level and stable. The critic Leonard Folsom has written that “The unheralded Wilton has a scene that combines the physical complexity of a Chaplin solo with close-ups of inexpressive expression that rival the finest moments of Keaton.” At the beginning of that scene, Wilton uses this smiling mug as his shaving mug, and while he sets it on the shelf above the washbasin midway through, it remains, as Folsom writes, “an oddly compelling focus of the film so long as it is onscreen, enormous in its diminutive size, menacing in its cheer.”

There are other shaving mugs that resemble this one, but none was created as this one was: by hand, with the assistance of a kiln, by a famous surrealist sculptor. This one was. In fact, it was wheel-thrown and fired by the Belgian artist Paul Coppens in 1932; Coppens, of course, was part of the group of artists supported by the patronage of Edward James. “I have dreamed of a smiling shaving mug,” Coppens wrote to James in June 1932. “A sketch is attached. It looks like a face, of course, because a face is the only thing that is capable of smiling (or is it?), but it also looks like a tooth, because a tooth is the only thing that is capable of showing when a face is smiling. In addition, I have noticed that daily washing rituals, including shaving, are illogically equated with the whiteness of teeth. But there is more to the image. Look at the handle. It functions like an ear visually, but as there is only one, this figure is incapable of ‘smiling ear-to-ear,’ as the idiom has it. In addition, I have recently learned that ‘mug’ is a slang term for the human face in some parts of the English-speaking world. (Ironically, this practice comes from the fact that beer steins were fashioned in the human image, and unattractive specimens of our race were said be ‘mug-faces.’)” Coppens’ piece, which he called Tooth Fils (the wordplay refers both to dentistry and to its small size), was part of the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936.

How Tooth Fils came to be in No News From the Navy is simpler than the creation of either work. James Wilton, who himself trained as a painter and considered himself an acolyte of, if not a participant in, Surrealism, attended the exhibit, acquired it, and insisted that it be in every one of his films. As there was only one film, this is a condition that history has found easy to satisfy.

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Annie Nocenti, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $26.]

I’m long off the vine. Eighty, truth be told. I refuse to be one of those biddies that dies with clutter. Found drooling in a wing-back, her thousand-strong frog collection eyeballing her. My clutter is for sale. I was a housewife in the Fifties, so there were various disappointments, which led to… various remedies. But that kind of clutter is not up for sale, and certainly not worth the price.

Let me see here… Salt Lick JFK. When I was thirty and Edith was eight, we’d go into the department store, and she’d rush up and down the aisles licking everything that took her fancy. She was a terrible embarrassment to me. I’d dig my fingernails into her until her arm glowed with a row of red crescent moons. But that little tumbleweed would twist out of my grip and be off licking a ceramic gnome or Easter egg or whatnot. I took her to the doctor and he said it was a “compulsion” she’d grow out of. She didn’t, but that’s another story.

One day Edith licked JFK and said, “It doesn’t need salt.” Turns out she had good taste. Most of the junk Edith licked turned out to be collectibles. Those pre-assassination JFK Salt Lick heads went on to be very popular after ’63. We used the head for a school report. Turns out salt licks are cosmic, from some divine cow of Norse mythology descended from one-eyed Odin. Salt licks have a certain… resurrection quality, not that that helped poor JFK. Cows quite like them. I can’t promise this one is unadulterated. But it’s got history.

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Luc Sante, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.79.]

Only now do I feel free to tell my part in the theft of the famed Light of the East diamond from the home of Roscoe and Mindy Furgarden in Beverly Hills in the summer of 1979. The 517-carat colorless gem, one of the world’s largest, had disappeared and reappeared many times in its tangled history. Its latest reemergence, among the effects of the Marquis of Glendale, had occasioned a crowded and contentious Sotheby’s auction that was won, to the dismay of all, by an anonymous telephone bid placed on behalf of the Furgardens.

The identity of the winner was sufficiently well concealed that the Furgardens felt no hurry to stow the diamond in a vault. Mindy needed to spend time staring at it, in her boudoir, where the illuminated five-part dressing mirror enhanced and multiplied its splendors. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut, though, and happened to tell her very best friend, Sheila Showpony, all about it on the terrace of Sheila’s Elizabethan cottage in the Hollywood Hills, right when my friend Craig was crouched nearby, cleaning out the pool filter.

Craig wasted no time organizing a crew of four to heist the rock. Sully was driver and lookout, Rat the lock specialist, and Craig and I were set to penetrate the boudoir. We frankly had no idea how to go about fencing the thing, but it was too rich a score to pass up. We learned that the Furgardens would be attending a charity polo match on the evening of June 18th, leaving the house in the care of their housekeeper, Mildred Swing, who was known to suffer from narcolepsy, and a retired cop named McDrain who acted as majordomo and security guard. McDrain’s weakness was the dog track, so we faked a hot tip on the sixth race to get him out of the house.

As we pulled into the driveway, the night was clear and we felt confident. Rat eased open the rear service entrance and we were in. We tiptoed up the stairs and found Mildred watching The Rockford Files in her room, her eyelids drooping. We easily found the master suite; within, the second door we tried led to Mindy’s boudoir. And there on the vanity lay the biggest diamond any of us had ever seen, lying casually on a chamois cloth like a naked movie star sprawled on a satin sheet.

Then the lights went out. We never found out what happened — had we cut an electric-eye beam? But we went into action mode. I wrapped the stone in its cloth, secreted it in a pocket of my jumpsuit, and we ran, bent low, down the carpeted hall and the carpeted stairs. We jumped into the car and made straight for our safehouse on the outskirts of Burbank, listening for sirens.

We yanked all the shades down and turned on a single light. I pulled the package out of my pocket. With slow, dramatic gestures I unwrapped it, only to discover… a Sanka ashtray. It was about the same size. In the dark I must have — I didn’t want to think about it. The others left me bleeding in an alley with the ashtray jammed into my mouth. I hung on to it for years as a bitter reminder, but eventually I drove to the nearest Goodwill box and shoved it in. And the stone? It disappeared that night and was never seen again.