The San Diego Chicken couldn’t eat all of Ted Turner’s head 
For some reason I thought about the San Diego Chicken this afternoon. I don’t know why.
He, she, it, the overgrown chicken mascot is now known as “The Famous Chicken.” It was the KGB Chicken when first I saw it in San Diego in 1978 at some concert. KGB were the call letters of a rock station there. The chicken was not some Soviet spy with the KGB, at least I don’t think it was because it was a pretty damn conspicuous chicken. But then, maybe being conspicuous would be a good cover for passing important secrets among spies. Do it all right out in the open, comrade.
Not only was the KGB Chicken conspicuous, it was also pretty obnoxious. I don’t think that it is a prerequisite for sports and other mascots to be obnoxious, but it seems to fairly prevalent from what I’ve seen. I guess if you have an inner-actor, or an inner-actor-upper, then being a chicken or an overgrown bear mascot would be just the disguise for some mild-mannered person who would in reality like to be a major pain in the ass.
I remember a fight broke out among mascots at this high school football game when last I worked in Southeast Texas. I can’t really remember how it went, the bear got belted by the bulldog or vice versa. I wasn’t there at the game, but the play-by-play sounded hilarious. Football seems to bring out the best in folks of that region.
At one game between different schools, but in the same county, one of the high school bands was performing a “West Side Story” routine. When the performers began a fight scene, a local police officer on the sidelines thought some real trouble was going down and rushed onto the field to stop the “melee.”
“Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;
We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get.
We ain’t no delinquents,
We’re misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!”
Well I am sure a moral exists here somewhere among the obnoxious chickens, warring bulldogs and bears and Officer Krupke stopping the half-time show. Danged if I know what it is. I guess you will just have to try to figure out the rest of where my mind was wandering all on your own. Good luck. I hope you do better with my mind than I do.