It’s amazing how the straws of life weave together to make a hat. Or a broach. Or a little pterodactyl. (100 points if you get the reference.) This whole summer I’ve been in a funk. Tourists walking the long stretch up to Alcatraz hoot and holler at me like I’m some penny-slot attraction. Booby Muffin hisses at them as they walk past, snapping photos, stealing our souls, but I can’t muster the strength for a singular threatening hee-haw. They’d probably just laugh and continue on to the gift shop anyhow.

And Binkus. Just as I was getting somewhere, really making progress, smelling the ink on the contract, summer hits like a bomb and Binkus is down in the keys, sailing his cigarette boats, knocking back margaritas, and eating peel n’ eat shrimp by the pound. Bev with a glass full of pricey sauvignon blanc, ice cubes, and lime by his side, the freckles on her ample bosom darkening into strange little country shapes. I bet Binkus’s skin has blistered hot red like a ketchuped tomato by now (my god that beast loves ketchup) and I’m sure Birky and Billy and all the other chicken-scarfing Binkuslings have made the trip down, on Unkle/Granddaddy/Daddy’s dime, breathing that balmy hurricane air, ingesting hot sauce like it’s water, comparing every quesadilla and spring roll to a Binkus Wing, shouting the glory of that chicken empire that may crumble if it doesn’t get a massive advertising revival headed by me, strong noble Donkey Pegasus of the fog, of the City by the Bay, where summer is a notion, not a rule. Crumble Binkus empire, crumble. Crumble like the waxy blue cheese you hope to scatter like pebbles over the iceberg piles you wish to serve in your national restaurant chain. Chains! Chains! These chains that bind me! Binkus! Binnnkusss!

I was nearly ready to quit. Not just Binkus, but advertising altogether. Work the fields maybe, over in Salinas. Plan a trip. Find Vook and Pepé. But sure as I was ready to do it, just yesterday, the fax machine spat out an ugly fuzzy roll of paper onto my office carpet. I unfurled it, like a scroll sent from faraway that spoke my future, and there it was—scrawled in the hand of the dark lord himself:

DP you old git,

Summer is over and man am I glad. Lots of ideas, hundreds of em, are swimming around in my head like those marlins we were catching in the keys. Hope you’re all rested up because it’s time to get to it. Let’s do some business. Have that commercial sketch to me by next Wednesday (see how relaxed I am?) and don’t worry about Billy’s ideas. That little turd took some job overseas, probably one of those hotty totty cities where chicken wings are considered too American to serve. The time to rise to the occasion is now Donkey. Autumn is the time for chicken! 

Sincerely,

Baron Binkus

 
And there I go, getting sucked back down the Binkus black hole. Someone save me.