Filed under: art,bizarre,brain exploders,internet crap,things that rule
Admit it: you think ceramics are for pussies. When you think of ceramics, you think of that scene from Ghost with the pottery wheel. Then you think of Pottery Barn because it also has the word “pottery” in its name. Then you realize that the bulk of your knowledge of the world of ceramics is informed by romantic/supernatural thrillers from the 1980s and stores that you’ve seen around, and you think to yourself “I really don’t know very much about ceramics.”
But then a dude named Charles Krafft comes along and makes a bunch of guns & grenades, a rabbit with a knife in its back, and some dinnerware commemorating modern disasters. Then you think to yourself “Hey… maybe ceramics is kinda cool sometimes.” You enroll in a night pottery class at your local community college. Then you find out that dude makes commemorative china out of human cremains, and you’re like “oh shit” and all this blood sprays out of your nostrils. Oops! Brain asploded!
In case you didn’t figure it out from the last post, I’m in New York (You know – with all the Chineemen). I’ll be here for another week and a half, and although I may post an occasional update or two, things will probably be pretty dead around here for the most part.
Statistically, there is a very slim chance that at some point today I will be kidnapped by a bunch of really serious-looking Korean guys. They might pull up alongside me, slide the side door of their white van open and grab me, slamming the doors closed. Then they might blindfold me and drug me and I might come to an hour or two later in some weird warehouse. There is an even slimmer chance, statistically, that they might then force me to run and jump down a Slip N Slide covered in diarrhea. I have no idea why they would do this. Maybe they’d demand ransom money nobody was willing to pay, or ask me for secret documents I didn’t have. You know: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that…” Or even worse, maybe it would be a Crocodile Mile covered in diarrhea with a pool of barf at the end of it. Maybe they’d make me run, slide, hit the bump and take a dive, and then I’d get up—in tears, no doubt—and I’d be all covered in diarrhea and barf, probably bruised up from all the pistol whipping, but you know what? If it happened today, I’d be wearing clean socks, and that would make it all a little less horrible because clean socks rule.
You’ve gotta give it up to anyone who’s appeared on every shitty sitcom for the past two decades and is still just “that guy.†You know—like you look at that picture of him and go “Oh! It’s that guy!†He popped up on some show we were watching and Jo said to me “Isn’t that the guy who always plays someone’s best friend and always has, like, a sub in his hand?†We laughed, but it was a little depressing to me. What I should have said was “No, actually. That’s Michael G. Hagerty. He played the part of the Coroner in a 1987 episode of Married With Children called ‘You Better Watch Out.’ He also played the part of Billy Pratt—Dean Proffitt’s best friend—in the 1987 Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn vehicle Overboard. Any other questions?†Here’s lookin at you, Hagerty: you totally rule. Now finish that sub and give Kurt Russell a hand with that firewood.
One day, back in 1975, John Trubee was sitting on his ass behind a cash register at a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey. He was bored out of his mind. Wouldn’t you be if you were sitting behind a cash register at a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey? What would you be doing? Reading? Doodling? Sudoku? Not John Trubee. Instead of wasting his time with some sort of piddling nonsense like number games or reading a book, John Trubee decided to take advantage it. He decided to do something. He picked up a pen, grabbed a piece of paper, and started to write. The words poured out of him like they had been inside him all along, just waiting to get out:
Hey, you. Yeah, you. The “street artist.” I’m really sad to hear that things aren’t going so well for you these days. What’s going on? It’s so weird that someone living in the third largest city in the United States could feel “so fucking lonely,” you know? There’s people all over the place. We literally live on top of each other around here. Seriously. How can you feel “so fucking lonely”? Unless… hey! Wait! I think I get it! Are you making a statement about how even though we live in such a densely populated area, we’re all still strangers to one another? Is it about how it’s possible to feel completely alienated and alone even though you’re completely surrounded by other people? Is that what’s going on here? That’s great and everything, but it’s too bad you had to totally bum me out when I was just walking down the street, enjoying some really nice weather. You could’ve written anything. Why not something like “BALLOONS ARE SO FUCKING FUN” or “SMILE – IT’S SO FUCKING FREE”? You blew it, dude. Sigh. Anonymous bummers suck.