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If You Want to Read a Long Story, This is It… lol

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The Tom Kettleman Incident… (and why I’ve been rogue for the past week)

So I live in a little town called Lodi.  It’s a quaint little town near the capital of California.  We don’t have much to do here, so anything out of the ordinary gets blown out of proportion… which leads me to my story… about a turkey.

This turkey wasn’t just any turkey.  He was first spotted on the busiest street we have in the middle of our town, giving him the name Thomas “Tom” Mills Kettleman, after the cross streets on which he was found, Kettleman Lane and Mills Avenue and Tom because that’s the name for a male turkey.  Nobody knows how he got there, so people were instantly fascinated with him.  I remember the first (and only) time I saw him, I immediately looked at my mom who was driving us and said, “Holy shit!  Is that a fuckin’ turkey?!” (I’m 28 years old and my mom and I have a close relationship, so yes, we openly cuss when it’s necessary) and we laughed and went on our happy way… sadly there were more than a few who became obsessed and another saw him as $$$…

Faster than you can say Tom Kettleman, a man, we’ll just call hm Bill, made an online facebook group called “Friends of Tom Kettleman” and quickly its member count climbed to 2,000 members.  It wasn’t long after under Bill decided to cash in on this wild animal and make tshirts and mugs through a local store, somehow getting them at “cost”.  Meanwhile, while Bill is building his empire, this poor, terrified bird is blocking traffic and caused a fender bender because of someone slamming on their breaks.  Not to mention the crazies that came out of hiding, parking in the middle of the road to take out their cameras and iphones to snap pictures of this poor scared turkey.

When I heard of this, because news travels fast in a small town with social media, I decided to be proactive.  I made a cute little cartoon turkey sign that encouraged people to take pictures of Tom Kettleman, but to pull into a parking lot safely and be mindful of other drivers and posted it on the “Friends of Tom Kettleman” group page.  I was immediately deleted and banned from the group.  Finding this odd, I decided to post it in the more friendly side group “We Love Tom Kettleman” page.  I quickly learned from this new group that “Friends of Tom Kettleman” (let’s just call them FOTK for short) were ban happy and anyone that had a disagreement with Bill, the admin, would be ridiculed, harassed, and insulted before being banned.    The rules he made for the FOTK group were ridiculous and the head members were even more so. (see attachment)

So I decided to post my cartoon that was deleted before, in this new group.  It got so many compliments in such a short amount of time that somehow Bill had gotten word about it and private messaged me something that would put me on a mission to break his empire down.

The message was clear and simple.  It said, “If you use Tom Kettleman on any pictures, tshirts or any other products you will be violating my trademark and I will take appropriate legal action.”  I was shocked and pissed that someone would openly threaten me for posting a picture of a cartoon turkey, so my reply was, “Excuse me??  Just because you say all the pictures are legal property of the group, doesn’t make it valid.”, quoting one of his rules in his group.  He went on to say, “Yes I have a trademark on the name Tom Kettleman and there will be legal action taken against you if you sell anything with Tom Kettleman.  With the name Tom Kettleman”  Now I’m really pissed off.  I go on to ask him if he’s really cashing in on this.  He replies, “No, Im 255000 in the hole from my own money. I do not make a profit from my items.  $550 in the hole.  But Im more than willing to spend more to protect my trademark!”  He even went so far as to say, “The trademark has been submitted to the feds. I do not need it to take action in state court only in federal court.  The fact that the t-shirt have the tm mark and I have sold them is all we need to take action against any infringement in State court. I would suggest you consult an attorney as I have before you take any action to use the name Tom Kettleman.”  Given the conflicting statements about federal and state court, I decided to do my research and look it up in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office…

…and what do you know?  No trademark exists.  Not even pending.

Now I feel a little bit relieved, but because I’m an artist, and accusing me of trademark infringement is like accusing an accountant with money laundering, I wasn’t going to let this go.  This man was trying to profit off a turkey, while threatening to sue any artist that was a threat to his “meal ticket” without actually owning a ™ and that doesn’t fly with me.

So our town has a group with about, oh I don’t know, 6,500 people in it, so I screenshot Bills empty threats to me and posted it on that page.  The response was fury and anger towards him for doing that.  People became involved, since most of them were banned for talking about relocating the turkey, and they told me they were going to go to our newspaper.

Then the FOTK crazies came out of hiding once more.  I got into many heated arguments with them, because they stood behind Bill, because he had given them such good pricing on their tshirts and mugs of this turkey they became obsessed with, to the point that they began watching him in shifts to make sure no one relocated him and fed him cracked corn out of a bowl so he wouldn’t move on and stay a town sensation… or danger to traffic.

It wasn’t long until they started snooping in on the other groups and taking screenshots to alert Bill that I wasn’t going to let him bully me around.  I kept getting threatened with a lawsuit, even though I hadn’t sold anything or done anything wrong.  I began researching anything that had to do with trademarks.  I had numerous people tell me that he’s full of shit because it’s a surname and it’s a wild animal.  Turns out they were right.  He doesn’t qualify, plus he’s claiming that he’s not making any money from it, which in turn, would defeat the whole purpose behind a trademark (since it’s there to protect an investment).

A friend of mine, frustrated by the whole ordeal, decided to make a group called, “Friends Against Tom Kettleman”.  He invited me and I helped him and a few others admin the group.  I created a funny picture for the group and we began to voice our opinion on this whole mess…  Somehow, someway, FOTK got FB to ban our page for hate speech.  Needless to say, we were ALL very pissed off.

At this point, another group sprouted from the ordeal.  It was called “The Safe Relocation of Tom Kettleman”.  I joined that group, because, although the bird was starting to piss me off, it wasn’t his fault that there were a bunch of crazy people obsessed with him and causing a town uproar.  I didn’t want him to die, I wanted him to live.  He didn’t deserve that kind of life.

Well, after more bickering from both sides and calls to Lodi News Sentinel and fish and game, I see a story on the fuckin’ news about this Bill being a great guy who really cared about the turkey.  ON THE SACRAMENTO NEWS!!!  WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!

I was about to throw in the towel.  I had tried everything in my power to show this guy for who he really is and try to get that turkey relocated.

Then it happened…

I got an email from a friend that said, “he’s dead.  Someone hit him.” Equipped with pictures of the grizzly accident… the only thing that could come out of my mouth at that point was pure laughter.  Like the kind of laughter that makes you out to look like a mentally challenged seal.  If this Bill had a trademark, it was useless now and after all the shit I went through, the relief of laughter was like a weight off my shoulders.

Oh but the weirdness didn’t stop there.

The FOTK crazies drove to where his carcass was and stopped traffic so they could pick up his feathers in the road…  Those who didn’t get them from the road, plucked  the feathers from the dead bird…  They began fighting about who would take ownership of him to get cremated …

Anyways it didn’t stop there.  Oh no, we’re on a crazy train and we’re not getting off anytime soon!!!  Mary (we’ll call her), the leader of the crazies, ended up claiming ownership and paying for the cremation…

THAT NIGHT, they had a vigil.  That’s right, you read it correctly… a candle light VIGIL!  They weren’t alone either!  Fox 40 news and KCRA news were there to get the whole thing on tape!  10 fucking minute segment on a god damn turkey!  A turkey that was only around for about 2 months!!!  Never mind the fact that a woman was just murdered a few days earlier and there was no vigil for her.  No press….

I took this time to make bumper stickers and prints that said, “I survived the Tom Kettleman turkey craze… Sadly, he didn’t.  RIP Tom Kettleman You were a big hit.”  The proceeds were going to pay for the cremation of my aunt-in-law who had just passed away two days before from the same cancer that took my father.

I messaged Bill again and asked him for a copy of his trademark and he brought up court, yada yada…  So I told him I’ll wait for the cease and desist letter.

Fucking ridiculous…

The next day they had a MEMORIAL!!!  I MEAN COME ON PEOPLE!  GET A HOBBY!!  Once again media was there (on a funny side note, my friend who started the group that got banned, ran up while they were filming and stole the poster they had made for the vigil and ran off screaming “fuck yeah!)

…And just when I thought things were going to die down and they couldn’t get any more fucked up, City Council puts up a fucking turkey crossing sign OUT OF OUR TAXPAYERS DOLLARS FOR A FUCKING DEAD BIRD, THAT DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE!!!

I’ve NOW heard they’re trying to raise money to get a statue…. And guess where they’re going to put it???  In the Wal-Mart parking lot.

I have officially given up on humanity in our town.

I kid you not, this is a true story.  I have pictures… and links…KCRA news Online uproar KCRA news dead Newspaper

…On a happier note, those bumper stickers and prints I made are selling out almost faster than I can make them, getting us that much closer to paying for my fiance’s aunt’s cremation.

So on behalf of all this mess…

Fuck you Bill.

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