Category: real reporting

Butterstick Live

Butterstick tickets are available online now, but good luck getting onto the National Zoo website. Even as we speak, hordes of PandaCam addicts and Stickheads are clogging up the joint. We couldn't even get the page to load.

Luckily, the Wonkette household snagged a set of "preview" tickets and last Saturday -- with two borrowed children in tow as cover -- we caught a glimpse of His Butteriness in person. In panda.

A confession: Our distaste at the pandarazzi popping flash pics of Butterstick was momentarily outweighed by the desperate need to document his mind-melting adorability. Thus the photo at right, snapped while the Stick struggled with a bamboo branch, heroically attempting to extricate his fuzzy noggin. Further highlights after the jump.

We needn't have brought the kids. There were plenty of adults in line, proudly toddler-free and embracing their own desire for the Stick. Indeed, kids seemed not that into the idea, or at least not that into the line, though at one point a Zoo docent did come by to show us all some shellacked panda poo.

Butterstick sleeping in person is not as cute as Butterstick sleeping on the PandaCam. You can't see his nose twitch.

Though he seemed playful enough and unperturbed by the attention, we are concerned about the Stick. Born out of wedlock, his father doesn't have a role in the Stick's life. Tian Tian is your classic dead beat panda dad, content to eat bamboo and scratch himself while mom does the hard work of raising the cub. We worry that without a male role model, the pressures of being a child star may corrupt Butterstick. He'll go from bamboo to booze, popping animal tranquilizers and hanging out with debauched heiresses while speeding around Cleveland Park in a zoo golf cart. And have you seen the way he humps the cage bars? Three words: Panda sex tape.

Maybe we can get him on Dr. Phil or something. Stop the madness before it starts.

Cub Viewing Tickets [FONZ]

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