Dear Internet,
Can you please help me out here. I’ve already tried my faithful friend Google, but I was only able to get a partial answer there. I’m just dying to know what, exactly, 1-800-Fat-Pony is.
Maybe a little background is in order. For the last few weeks at S’s bedtime, we’ve been reading the new Kelly DiPucchio/Heather Ross book Crafty Chloe together. Have you seen it yet? It’s the best. It features a wonderfully inspiring story about how a little girl’s crafty ingenuity saves the day, it’s filled with hilarious illustrations of this girl’s craft projects in progress (which include a baby brother covered with googly eyes), and it even has a really fun website that provides age-appropriate craft projects for parents and their little Crafty Chloes to do together. (We’ve already got the glow-in-the-dark fabric paint queued up for a spring break pajama project.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m pre-disposed to like the book because, well, I’m in it. Sort of.
Yeah, that’s me–more or less. The more part is the befuddled look on my face, which I think I frequently have when my little Crafty Chloe gets going on her own projects. (Last weekend, she made a raincoat for a friend’s tiny toy dolphin using fabric scraps, packing tape, and staples. Dolphins need raincoats. Who knew?) The less part is the stubbly little chicken legs. My legs are much more attractive than these. Everyone says so. Really.
I didn’t know that Heather had based the illustrations of Chloe’s father on me until she was almost done with the project. And then I found out…. Well, I forget exactly how I found out. But I’m pretty sure I was never asked if I would mind serving as the model for one of the characters in the book. No worries, though. I couldn’t be more flattered.
But now, back to the matter at hand. There’s an illustration toward the end of the book that features a little horse trailer with a phone number written on it.
One night Liesl and S were reading the book together, and I heard them giggling about that phone number, 1-800-Fat-Pony. Funny, right?
The next morning, when she woke up, S was still talking about 1-800-Fat-Pony. She and Liesl were speculating about what would happen if they called the number. “Why not,” I thought. So I dialed. And what do you think happened? Spanish pop music.
We’ve called several times now. And each time it’s a different song. Most of the time, but not always, the lyrics are in Spanish. It’s almost like a radio station. But we’ve never heard a DJ speak between songs.
We’ve checked the number with Google, and it looks like it might belong to Sony Entertainment. But I have no idea what it is. Is it a live stream of a Mexican radio station? An endless loop of music by entertainers on one of Sony’s niche recording labels? A portal into an alternate universe where Spanish-speaking people listen to music by dialing a telephone number and talk to one another using radios? I’ve got no clue.
That’s why I’m asking you, dear Internet. You’re smarter than any individual person. So what can you tell me? What, exactly, is it that you hear when you dial 1-800-Fat-Pony? Please leave a comment to enlighten me. I really want to know.
(And before you jaded, marketing-savvy smarty-pants say that this is something set up by the book’s publisher, let me tell you that you’re wrong. I asked Heather what 1-800-Fat-Pony is. And she says she doesn’t know. She never thought to dial the number to see what would happen while she was illustrating the book. That’s what happens when you’re on deadline, I suppose.)
Thanks in advance for your help with solving this Fat Pony mystery,
Todd