While at the post office on Saturday, I bought a new batch of stamps. I had my pick of all sorts of impressive faces like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The woman in front of me did not know who that was as she was discussing stamp faces on line and I wanted to jump in and quiz her about a gaggle of women writers and quite possibly embarrass her enough to compel her to go back to school, nothing fancy maybe FCCJ, and enroll into an Introduction of Fiction class, but then it was my turn at the window and I was fine about letting her live her life without ever reading The Yearling.
Besides I was busy trying to decide what kind of stamps to buy myself. I've given to breast cancer research, I've walked 13 miles for breast cancer support and I've licked off the pearly pink lids of French yogurt and mailed them in for breast cancer funding, I didn't think I needed to buy the stamps. There were the American scientists stamps, portraits of very smart men and women but without a hint of whimsy. I'm not sure it showed their human side and that's important on a stamp. Flower stamps, I mean really, why not just the flag stamps and get it over with? There was the Black History figure stamp, but I am ashamed to say that I didn't recognize the person, so I felt relieved Bill Cosby was not behind me ready to quiz my sorry ass. As guilty as I felt, in good conscience I couldn't buy stamps of someone I didn't know or would, in all honesty, not even Google. Which left only one set of stamps to buy, a figure in popular literature that embodies the philosophy of the East with a smidge of semantic dyslexic terseness and the warrior moxie of Miss Piggy. That's right, I bought Yoda stamps.
Which got me to thinking about how that decision came about. How exactly do you get on a stamp? Is there a committee? Voting? How long does it take? Can money exchange hands to make that final decision come out a certain way? A more intelligent and far more ambitious person would research these questions and report back on them, well, you know that's not me. I'd rather think about them until my next random thought. But it did get me thinking about who else I'd like to see on a stamp because Yoda was frackin' genius. I should've bought a hundred of them. So here are my Top Five nominations for getting their mugs on a stamp:
5. Andre the Giant. Sure he was foreign, but he was the best giant in one of the most perfect movies ever, The Princess Bride.
4. Mr. Rogers. He always used his power for good.
3. Carol Burnett. Watching her show every Saturday night saved me and made me funny.
2. Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the modern typewriter.
1. Charlotte the Spider, because she was a good friend and a good writer.
So, Eastside Scribes, what are your nominations for stamp immortality?
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5 comments:
Ok, this post would make a philatelist proud. I almost bought stamps today but it was a choice between that and the lottery. Don't think I didn't notice the Elektra stamp either.
a smidge of semantic dyslexic terseness...
How do you work your magic thus?
Bill Cosby quizzing your sorry ass--that had me laughing.
My nominations:
Billy Collins
It would be a boring stamp but still he's so accessible.
Maybe Scooby-Doo?
Thank you, thank you for this awesome post.
1. Edward J. Olmos
2. Don Cornelius
3. Chuck D
4. Johnny Carson
5. Jenna Jameson - The USPS is strapped for cash
I'm a miserable slacker. I never pay attention to my stamps. At all. Some days it must be hard to be you.
Okay, my five:
5. Julie Andrews (sure she's not a US citizen, but she's all of My Favorite Things and more).
4. Maya Angelou (you know why)
3. Antonio Banderas - just so I get to lick it
2. Robin Williams, the crazy bastard
1. Gene Rayburn - the matchgame guy. Watching him in reruns on the Gameshow Network actually makes me wish for the simpler times, when life's biggest difficulty was to decide on the pattern for your polyester leisure suit.
I love your mental monologues, your fluency, and I applaud your internal censor while in public places. I started my list and then decided to categorize: all writers, five men, five women. Will hafta think more about broader categories, i.e., non-humans, inventors, current and/or historical figures, etc.
List 1 - Male Authors
5. Evelyn Waugh for Brideshead Revisited
4. James Hilton for Random Harvest and Lost Horizon
3. Don Marquis for Archy and Mehitabel
2. Walt Kelly for Pogo and the Okeefenokee gang (Albert, Churchy, Porky, Howland, Mamzelle, et al.)
1. PG Wodehouse for Psmith and Bertie and the immortal Jeeves
PS. Hon. Mention to Robertson Davies for Fifth Business and What's Bred in the Bone
List 2 - Female Authors
5. Tie between Stella Gibbons for Cold Comfort Farm and Nancy Mitford for The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate
4. Daphne du Maurier for Rebecca and Frenchman's Creek
3. Colette for every beautiful word even though my French isn't good enough to read her in the original
2. Charlotte Bronte for Jane Eyre
1. Jane Austin, of course.
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