Conversations with Dad 7: The Belated Father's Day Post

It seems that every day—with increased frequency—we are inundated with people speaking for people in an unofficial capacity, exclaiming what is wrong with society and what needs to be fixed at home. They single-handedly select who are fit parents. They determine the very genders those parents must be. And they proclaim the moral fiber necessary to be a proper parent, all the while wearing theirs in a rather loose weave.

I don't know about other people's parents (well, in some cases I know far too much, but this is not the venue to discuss such matters). I only know my own, my dad in particular. And I know that on more than one occasion, the man came though with flying colors for his two sons. This is one such example...

Starting from the late 1950's to the present day, my father—Frank Marciuliano—has been a commercial graphic designer of great standing. With a ledger of clients that has included Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Yves Saint Laurent, Newsweek, The New York Times, The World's Fair and Lloyd Bridges to name a few, he has never been without a means to ply his craft. But somehow, despite both the media attention and industry accolades, he found he was still longing to do something grand, something unique, something that would say to all the word, "Here is a man of unequaled vision."

And so it was in the early 1970's that my dad began to design a series of what can best be described as softcore pornographic T-shirts, sold through The Pleasure Chest. A rather famous "adult entertainment" store located in New York's Lower East Side, The Pleasure Chest was often a stopping point for my dad and me as he would drop off his wares on the way to his office, simply because when it came to either leaving your child unattended in a car in Manhattan circa 1974 or bringing him into an establishment that prominently featured zipper masks and ball gags, the latter was by far the wiser choice.

Within a few months one of his designs—The Original Orgy Shirt—became a fashion sensation. When it wasn't being lifted without permission by unscrupulous, untalented manufacturers (a famous illegal copy once featured the illustration along with the tagline "It's Better in the Bahamas"), the shirt won several New York and international commercial graphic design awards, was chosen as a "Must Have" by New York Magazine and was written up in countless publications (Please note: Mailing address—and T-shirt price—are no longer applicable):



Soon my dad was receiving hundreds of orders for The Original Orgy Shirt from a vast and varied clientele that included movie stars, newspaper editors-in-chief, U.S. Ambassadors, CEOs, bank presidents and celebrated publishing tycoons:



It was during such a deluge of orders featuring immediately recognizable signatures that my father got a letter that to this very day he views as the equivalent of an errant knight receiving the Holy Grail by way of parcel post. A letter that in his eyes would be like opening the Ark of the Covenant and having your facial features remain intact. A letter that in a few short sentences immediately validated months of constant illustrating and relentless fantasizing. A letter that read in whole:


(Please note: Return address on upper righthand corner of letter and end of correspondence have been digitally removed.)

Now to say that my father is "a fan" of Warner Brothers cartoons in general—and Mel Blanc in particular—would be a criminal understatement. Not only was it my father's love of animation and comic art that inspired me to both pursue and ultimately achieve my present career, but he has always said that some of the most cherished moments in his life were sitting with his sons on the living room couch or at the kitchen table breakfast, watching an endless stream of Saturday morning cartoons, from the senseless ("The Amazing Chan Clan") to the sublime ("The Bugs Bunny-Roadrunner Show").

When my father opened the letter from Mel Blanc he quickly knew it was more than a simple T-shirt order. It was a chance to provide his kids with a keepsake he knew would mean all the world to them. Thus, he immediately mailed two T-shirts, politely asking that in return perhaps the man who gave so much joy to his sons could give them something else as well. Less than three months later he received the following response:



Along with a framed picture that still ranks as our own framed Picasso:



And so it was that a father bored with graphic design began to illustrate naked people for money and ultimately gave his kids one of the greatest gifts they could ever hope to get. If I ever have kids hopefully I can do the same for them —but perhaps by way of a nice comic strip panel instead of a 96-person bare-ass pile-up. Just perhaps.

Previously on "Conversations with Dad":
Payback: The Other Movie with the Exact Same Title
Death and Family in a New Jersey Diner
Pick-A-Dick
The Pizza Incident
The Visit
The Clock