No Elbow Fetishists

Copyright 1998, Andy Ihnatko
From MacCentral

I probably ought to warn y'all at the top here that this particular column features a smidgen of adult content, in that it concerns certain sexual practices...well, I doubt that it's a sexual practice so much as a...that is to say, that I should hope that no one's ever gone out and actually...

What I'm trying to say in this introduction is that people who blanch at the mention of words like "ointment" should probably not be reading this. And while I'm at it, I'm doing a dashed good job explaining that people born and bred in Boston probably should never take a stab at talking about sex in a public forum, proving to both readers and, I hope, potential advertisers that this column consistently provides value for the money.

Anyway, I just want to explain to everyone why there isn't an Elbow Fetishist Homepage on my website.

It's not that I don't think the idea has merit, of course, or that I don't think that there's a segment of the population eager to check out a website geared towards people who get all hot and bothered over photos of people's elbows. When I sat there in a diner lo those many years ago, jotting down a list of things I wanted to do with my website-yet-to-be, I put a double underscore under that one. "That's the baby," I said to myself, seeing a rosy future for Andy Ihnatko's Colossal Waste Of Bandwidth when word got out about a website devoted to the most bizarre imaginable fetish, and cigarette and beer companies began pounding on my door or just simply squeezing their desperate ad fees under the crack in the door.

Biting social satire was the intent. After all, 72% of the Web's content is indeed porn-related -- 72% of the good stuff, anyway -- and what better way to squeegee the third eye of the medium (to rip off Bill Hicks) than to take the concept of porno sites to its ultimate expression? This site was to be an unabashed celebration of the human elbow. Naked elbows. Clothed elbows. Elbows clad in schoolmarm-like sleeves. Elbows in bondage. Elbows slathered in chili. Group elbows. The whole nine yards. And a few wry asides by the "webmaster," in which she registers disgust and contempt at those "freako earlobe perverts" out there.

When I went to Macworld Expo shortly after coming up with this, I walked the streets of The City with camera in hand and elbow fetishing in mind, amassing quite a little gallery of elbow porn. The crowning achievement of fictional perversion, I thought.

But then something happened which led me to quietly bury all those photos -- and any notion of ever attempting anything remotely like this ever again -- and walk away very fast.

There used to be this wonderful weekly column by Greg Bulmash called The Washed-UPdate. Each and every Wednesday, I'd swing by for his latest piece about what USA Network movies and police lineups I can see the child stars of the Seventies are appearing in today. And one fateful week, Greg included a link to...

The Body Inflation Fetish website.

I clicked. I read. I was jealous. This Luther Kane guy had beaten me to the punch with a parody webpage which far, far exceeded my own petty, sophomoric plans. Instead of elbows, Luther had decided to base his on the idea of people getting all hot and bothered about the idea of people being inflated like balloons.

Brilliant! Suggesting the seeds of a bizarre fetish in a movie that everyone's familiar with. Damn, this guy's good.

Stories. Dozens of them, all of them tame, PG-13 things about happy accidents with helium tanks or vacuum cleaners or magic rings. Yeah, smart of him not to make these things out-and-out pornographic; this way, his humor site can be read by everyone.

Hmm. An awful lot of these stories here, aren't there?

Body Inflation In The Media. Frame-grabs from movies (like Willy Wonka) in which people get blown up. OK.

Pictures. Drawings of people getting blown up. Wow, some sketches of Catwoman and other comic-book characters getting blown up, too. How much time did Luther spend putting this gag together?

You know that scene in those vampire movies, where the intrepid vampire investigator is cautiously but fearlessly exploring the beast's empty lair, and then he catches sight of a smoldering cigarette butt in an ashtray and makes a frenzied leap, crashing out the nearest window, because he immediately realized that Evil Lurks Nearby? I had that sort of thing happen when I got to the page where visitors are invited to send in photos of celebrities they'd like to see drawn as human balloons.

I'd intended that Dr. Suess book as a gift for my niece, but I tore some of its pages as I frantically flipped from page to page to page, so desperate was I to have some nice, innocent, cute and happy images to shove aside the recent knowledge that yup, that was a serious webpage for serious human balloon fetishists.

There were links to other human balloon fetish pages, too! THEY HAVE THEIR OWN YAHOO CATEGORY!!!

Puppies and dandelions and lollypops and bunnies in blue waistcoats with shiny brass buttons...

OK. I can continue now.

Friends, I gotta be fair, and say that a fetish about...well, that...is no more aberrant than having a preference for shapely legs, or women wearing nothing but an astronaut helmet and scuba flippers, or redheads, when you get down to brass tacks. "Consenting adults minding their own business" and all that. Actually, consenting adult, because, I mean, how can...er...

Look, I'm gonna go get myself another Coke and watch Return of The Jedi, OK?