{"id":5219,"date":"2026-08-04T16:22:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T21:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/?p=5219"},"modified":"2026-08-04T16:22:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T21:22:34","slug":"the-vandam-street-puppet-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/the-vandam-street-puppet-head\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vandam Street Puppet Head"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just finished Road Kill<\/a> by Kinky Friedman–it’s the one where he has to save Willie Nelson from an Indian curse–and it occurred to me last week that there are no Kinky-related American Artifacts<\/a>. Let’s fix that.<\/p>\n

If you’ve as much as skimmed the first few pages of Kinky Friedman novel, you’re probably already familiar with the basic form, function, and lifestyle of this puppet head that once lived in the apartment of America’s foremost cowboy, country musician, private detective, novelist, and Chosen Person, Kinky Friedman. For those of you who have not had this particular pleasure, the Vandam Street Puppet Head is, as its name implies, a disembodied puppet head that lived atop the refrigerator of Kinky’s Vandam Street apartment (one floor down from the lesbian dance studio). It depicts a young black fellow of somewhat racist caricature and a small parachute attached to the top of his head. There’s a key clenched between the puppet’s teeth.<\/p>\n

The key between the puppet’s teeth opened the front door of the Vandam Street building, and the parachute allowed Kinky to toss the head down to visitors so they could let themselves in. Most people assume that Kinky brought the puppet head with him to Vandam Street and placed a key to the building between its teeth in order to avoid having to walk all the way down and then back up four flights of stairs whenever he had a visitor. Most people also assumed that the key only opens the Vandam Street building. Both of these assumptions are horseshit.<\/p>\n

The puppet head was on the fridge when Kinky got there, the key was already between its teeth, and Kinky just assumed that the previous occupant had done with the puppet head exactly what most people assume Kinky had done with the puppet head. Conventional wiseguys are unclear as to whether any previous occupants of the apartment found the puppet head under similar circumstances. The key, for its part, will open more than just the front door to the VanDam Street building. It won’t open every lock on the planet, but its success rate is notably higher than any of the other keys clenched between puppet head teeth thus far reported.<\/p>\n

Kinky always had an inkling that one day he would turn his investigative skills to learning more about the mystery of the puppet head, but such inquiries were inevitably sidetracked by the head’s proximity to a bottle of Jameson. Kinky’s cat immediately recognized the head for what it was–stories of the puppet head have been part of cat folklore for decades–but chose to say nothing.<\/p>\n

Mechanics: When a character attempts to use the key from the Vandam Street Puppet Head’s mouth, the user makes a Nerve roll with the same DN that a character would roll against to pick the lock. If the roll succeeds, the key will forevermore open that particular lock. If the roll fails, the key will never open that particular lock. Once the key has been used to open a lock, it must be replaced between the puppet’s teeth for at least 1 hour before it can be used again. If someone attempts to open a lock with the key during this time, that particular lock becomes one fo the ones that the key will never open (no roll required).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished Road Kill by Kinky Friedman–it’s the one where he has to save Willie Nelson from an Indian curse–and it occurred to me last week that there are no Kinky-related American Artifacts. Let’s fix that. If you’ve as much as skimmed the first few pages of Kinky Friedman novel, you’re probably already familiar…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052,2061],"tags":[69,372,2758,2990,3726,3841],"class_list":["post-5219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-hex-ficton","category-other-hex-games","tag-magic","tag-american-artifacts","tag-willie-nelson","tag-kinky-friedman","tag-magic-items","tag-jameson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5227,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions\/5227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}