Toy Story Two

It all started out so innocently. Super Agent Fred and I went to lunch this afternoon and I was telling him about the post below on the Invasion of the Barbies and then I told him about how the wicked, wicked commentators on the post had urged me to follow through on my harmless little whim about creating a Barbie cabaret act diorama and then, the next thing I knew, we were wheeling off for the Toys R Us in the suburban hellhole south of here in order to get the necessary Ken dolls for the essential, sordid tea room sex scene.

How do these things happen?

All the way to the store we sympathized with each other about how we loathe shopping malls. Once there, it turned out to be every bit as a bad as we had pissed and moaned about, if not worse. The whole place seems to have evolved over the years out of one bad idea into several. There was no directory, so we were forced to wander around amongst the fat people past the most dreadful merchandisers you can imagine. Who needs multiple stores hawking football logo crap? Did you know Orange Julius and Dairy Queen have joined in some unholy union? The only cute guy in the entire place only wanted to sell us a new cell phone.

When we did find Toys R Us, it turned out to be a stunted little mini-operation; it's possible the space was originally a storage closet. Still, Fred and I shared in the guilty thrill of it all. There was a whole raft of pirate stuff. Pirate stuff! If I hadn't already started down the Barbie path, I would so certainly have gone pirate. Maybe after the cabaret I can move onto Barbies of the Caribbean, Buccaneer Princess.

Instead of the sweeping aisles of Barbies I had envisioned, there was one dinky little section. I could have done better staying at home waiting for random kids to leave their dolls behind. We took two Ken dolls (thus cleaning out their entire selection) and scrammed, pausing only to feel really, really sorry for the poor schmo clerk, in his mid-30's, stuck in a third rate toy store with a crappy Casio knock-off keyboard set on "irritating 80s beat" to keep him company. He recommended we go to a famously evil, anti-gay mass marketer for more choice of all things Barbie. Possibly out of spite, I don't know. We went. I am ashamed.

Did you know Barbie has morphed out of the slightly slutty style icon she was in the 60s into some kind of fat faced mutant with a much smaller rack? What's the point? On a positive note, all of the Kens look totally, absolutely gay, gayer than me, and that's saying something.

Crushingly, there was no Solo in the Spotlight Barbie,

which, obviously, is pretty much the centerpiece of any cabaret act diorama, goddamit, unless I want to go with some Priscilla, Queen of the Desert salute with the Kens.

Exhausted, I dropped off Fred and came home where I started vaguely remembering a gay doll from the 90's that would add a lot to the whole thing. Internet-based research turned up the item that he was "Billy Doll, the anatomically correct gay doll" Although "anatomically exaggerated" would probably be more accurate.

I took some Vicodan and started looking further on the web (and let me say, no sentence starting with those words will turn out well) and stumbled on an EBay auction of him. I've heard how difficult EBay has become, with online tutorials about how to win now, but in this, my first crack at it, I bid and by the time I thought "I hope I don't score this stupid thing," it was too late.

So now I have two Barbies, three Kens and two Billys, one of which is his Puerto Rican friend, Carlos.

It's all spiraling out of control.