Over the weekend, an Ogle Mole sent me a link to perhaps the coolest local eBay auction since we once offered up a baseball with Regular Jim Traber's phone number written on it.
The item for sale was a vintage Rock 100.5 the Katt mascot costume. It comes from a time when Rick and Brad Theatre was a thing, the radio station played butt rock bands like AC/DC, Def Leppard and Ozzy Osbourne in heavy rotation, and Greg Zoobeck was still alive and well and asking girls out over the radio.
Okay, I think that's still the way things are at the Katt, so maybe that wasn't the best way to reference the time period. The mascot was from the mid-1980s and 1990s. Here's the description:
This costume was made by Hazel's Fantasy Factory, in the 1980's. One of a kind super rare! This costume will need to be cleaned, there are a few wear spots from use, and head is dented in a little bit, but can be corrected by stuffing something inside it. Up for sale is 1 head, 1 body, 1 paw. I am inside costume and am 6'1" tall and I weigh 185 pounds, that will give you an idea of the size...
Simple Treasures L.L.C.404 N. Grand Ave.Enid, OK. 73701
And here are some pics:
Awesome, huh? It makes me want to turn on some Seether, cook a bunch of meth and get a prison tattoo from Bladerunner.
The item carried a hefty $500 "Buy It Now" price tag. That seems expensive, but for an iconic piece of local pop culture nostalgia and the ability to get free entry to any concert at the Diamond Ballroom, that's not too steep a price. Of course, I'm the same guy who would pay $200 for Tall Paul's jock strap, so I'm probably not the most rational person to talk to when it comes to this stuff
I texted Marisa and Old Tony to see if they wanted to pitch in and buy the costume. Tony informed me that he's scared of cats, so he's out, whereas Marisa reminded me, once again, that she's poor and would be unable to contribute. She suggested we start a Go Fund Me or hit up Clark Matthews. I thought that was a good idea. Why pay cash for something when people on the Internet will give you the money for free?
So, I was about to set up a Go Fund Me this morning when this happened:
What?! The listing was ended by the seller because it's not longer available!? I haven't bought or sold an item on eBay in over a decade, so I have no clue what that means. Did it sell, or did the seller take it down because it didn't sell? Or did the seller reach an offline deal with one of those furry assholes from Watonga? If so, do you think they'll let us borrow it next time we go to a bar on the south side and pretend to be Jake Daniels?
Regardless of what happened to the costume, talk about a missed opportunity. This sucks just about as bad as having to listen to a two-fer Tuesday block of Puddle of Mudd while you wait in the lobby at Jiffy Lube. Now I want to listen to Sister by the Nixons and cry. Maybe the cosmic forces of the universe will make things up to us and put the Abner 89er costume on Craigslist. Hell, I'll even take a baseball with Jim Traber's new phone number. I'm that desperate.
