
Awww Skeet Skeet
Pop culture entropy keeps most from dwelling on what happened to their once iconic favorites. These characters fade away from the spotlight. Some make the transition to the mundane with grace and dignity, heading up legitimate corporate ventures, or lending their name to upscale doggy biscuits, and other consumer goods. Still others, like Skeeter Valentine have great difficulty creating a normal life post-stardom.
Skeeter Valentine, so enamored by Hollywood, foolishly sunk all his assets and earnings from his cartoon successes into the sequel to Doug's first movie; "Skeeter Valentine's: Macbeth and The Ghost of Klotzenstein". Plagued by weather, on-set turmoil, and several re-writes, Skeeter's movie came out 16 months later than expected on a very limited ‘straight to DVD’ release. His showbiz career has never recovered.
Blacklisted by the animation community, Skeeter spent the next six years running drugs for the Yakastonian mob until he was arrested on the concourse of the Ciudad Bolivia airport. In his possession was a suitcase lined with 15 pounds of opium. He spent the next two years in a LA PAZ prison. Once incarcerated, Skeeter’s connections into the mob world only strengthened.
Pressures on the Bolivian government, from Bono and the US State Department, led to Skeeter's early release in July of 2003. Having done time for the family, Skeeter was given the esteemed job of heading up the Mobilized Web Hosting Division; a gesture that showed that Valentine was a ‘made man’.
Using a brilliant smile and broadly appealing stock art, Valentine tricks the unsuspecting web enthusiasts into buying "cheap, effective web hosting”. After getting your credit card information, he will provide you only the most minimal of services. Going along with his service par, Skeeter has several policies and practices designed to keep customers from bothering him. One such practice is the use of a custom designed phone system that keeps all incoming calls on hold, forcing the client to wait for a mysteriously busy customer service representative. Mixed with the claims of owning a series of trailers and camp grounds in The Smokies, a PO Box in New York, NY, a datacenter in Cedar Falls, Missouri, and a research station in Western Siberia, Russia, this company seems to be so large that their misguided customer service is excusable. Ironically named “The Best Web Hosting", this mob front builds up a convincing façade that is successful at fooling even the most experienced of the web-savvy. Should a customer become so enraged that they file grievances against the web hosting company, by terms of service contracts, all legal matters shall be settled in Onslow County, Florida; currently the most lenient court in the lower 48 states.
When the demands on his server equipment become too intense, Valentine cuts his losses and flees to a new town to start the process over again. Leaving his victims high and dry.
- Art
- Stevil
- Writing
- Stevil, Graham
Plate 58 · Publications