I Don't Even Like Clowns, But...

I'm not a fan of clowns. Even one's in need. They creep me out. Mostly because of Stephen King, and John Wayne Gacey. Also. I don't like audience participation and they always want you to participate. I'm an INFJ. Stop judging me clowns!

But, I was reading the New Yorker this week and stumbled across this poem and it stuck with me enough that I tracked it down on their website and am bringing it to you.


Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats for -

If a Clown
by Stephen Dunn

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.

And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?

What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?

If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?

And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art?

I can tell you it worked.

Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling.

If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?

A Short Song from Ms. Parker

Because it's Monday. Because it's been too long since I've featured Ms. Parker here, because...just because.

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

- Dorothy Parker

Mug Taken to Mona Lisa's Mug

In the category of art news that made me giggle comes this story.

From CNN.com

Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece the "Mona Lisa" was attacked with a mug earlier this month, but the world's most famous painting -- protected by thick glass -- emerged with its enigmatic smile undimmed.

The "Mona Lisa" sits behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre gallery.

French police say a woman "not in her senses" lobbed the mug at the 500-year-old painting, which hangs in the Louvre gallery in Paris.

The woman, a tourist, was later transferred from police custody to a psychiatric unit, a police spokesman told CNN. The spokesman declined to be identified, and did not say where the woman was from.

Of course, now I have the Nat King Cole version of "Mona Lisa" stuck in my head. Dangit.

In Memory of Patch - the Last Tommy

This past week England buried a hero. Harry Patch, aged 111, was the last living soldier who had fought in WWI. He survived the famous battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Many have been moved to write and pay tribute to Patch through the years, but the latest tribute, in this writers humble opinion, is one of the most moving. Another British darling, the band Radiohead, premiered their tribute to the late soldier on BBC Radio 4 last Thursday.

"Harry Patch (in memory of)" is absolutely heartbreaking. Its combination of strings, orchestrated by Johnny Greenwood and the soul stirring voice of Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke strike a similar chord of the soundtrack from Schindler's List. It's music that stays with you for days after you hear it. If the music wasn't enough to haunt you, the lyrics will. Excerpted from the interview that inspired the song, they bring vivid mental pictures of what Harry Patch must have experienced during those muddy, bloody days in 1917.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

I am the only one that got through
The others died where ever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
I've seen devils coming up from the ground
I've seen hell upon this earth
The next will be chemical but they will never learn

So many of us will have had fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers who fought in the First World War; but it is easy to forget. Of course we mustn’t and with this moving, modern tribute, we have a chance to stop and remember.

You can download the song from Radiohead’s official website for £1. All proceeds from the track will be donated to the Royal British Legion.
To hear the full version of the song go to the BBC website.

His obituary was absolutely lovely. Please check it out here.

Rest in Peace Patch.

Clowns Kick KKK Asses- My Favorite Story This Year

Most anyone who knows me knows that there is one thing that can move me to want to commit violence- and that's white supremacy. Odd, because that is exactly what they would like to evoke- violence. I get so frustrated by the stupidity and the utter useless hate and energy that goes into thinking that one race is better, or more entitled than another.

Growing up in north Florida the place was chock full of "skinheads" - a term I put in quotes because honestly-they were just thugs who needed an excuse to hate people and honestly-it wasnt just blacks or hispanics, they pretty much just hated anybody and were always looking for a fight. If you were a woman, homosexual, old, fat, skinny, smart, religious, different, BREATHING, they would find a way to try and start a fight. Strangely enough, most of them were named Christian-which I always also thought was ironic to the extreme.

A friend sent me this link today and all I can say is BRAVO!!! Sign me up! When and where do you meet. I'd be glad to dance amongst these clowns.

Clowns Kicked KKK Asses



Here’s an excellent example of pwnage: when the white supremacist group VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK tried to host a hate rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, they were foiled by … clowns!

Unfortunately for [VNN] the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were.

Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns. http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/7704982.html

“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”


*This makes me so happy I could clap my hands like a little kid at a birthday party.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen of Knoxville, TN. I applaud you!!!

Iz the Wiz- Grafitti Great Dies

When I think of New York in the 70s and 80s I think of the dirty city filled with the homeless, trash blowing in the breeze and grafitti everywhere. Grafitti was a major part of what formed the perception of New York in those decades. The city that had been the gleaming jewel of the country since the Roaring 20s became the truly rough, tourist-not-welcome example of city life in America. If you look at movies from the era you'll see it in the backgrounds- be it a Woody Allen or a Martin Scorcese film, be it uptown or downtown, there is usually a tag somewhere to be found.

One of the greats of the genre was "Iz the Wiz", considered by most as the "longest-reigning all-city king in N.Y.C history." At one time or another Iz put his tag on subway cars running on every line in the NYC subway system more times than any other known artist.

Michael Martin — Iz the Wiz — died on June 17 in Spring Hill, Fla., where he had moved a few years ago. He was 50. The cause was a heart attack, said Ed Walker, who is working on a biography and documentary of Iz the Wiz. Mike was born in Manhattan and lived in a succession of foster homes after his mother was imprisoned for burglary. He did not know his father. He grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, and as a teenager lived in Covenant House on the Lower East Side.

Mike withdrew from the scene in the mid-1980s. He managed a grocery store briefly, then began using drugs heavily. A marriage in the late 1980s ended in divorce. He is survived by a brother, Peter Poston of Spring Hill, and a sister, Evelyn Poston of East Stroudsburg, Pa.

Mr. Martin learned he had kidney failure in 1996, which he assumed was a result of working with aerosol paint, and for the rest of his life he was on dialysis. His financial situation was dire. “He never made the connections he needed to make to be appreciated in the art world,” Mr. Sar said.

Martin started tagging walls at the young age of 14, using Scat or FCN (French Canadian National-even though he wasn't Canadian). He graduated to subway cars early in his "career" specializing in the A line-the longest in the subway system.

In 1975, in the 68th Street Station of the Lexington Avenue line, Mike saw a poster for the Broadway play “The Wiz” with the slogan, “The Wiz Is a Wow.” It had a certain ring. “He said, ‘If the Wiz is a Wow, why can’t Iz be the Wiz?’ ” his friend and fellow graffiti artist SAR (real name, Charles Sar) recalled.

With the graffiti artist Vinny, Mr. Martin mounted an intensive throw-up campaign on the A line. In the late 1970s he branched out to other lines, spray-painting top-to-bottoms (graffiti displays extending from the top of a train to the bottom), burners (complicated works intended to dazzle the competition) and fully realized scenes, like his homage to John Lennon, painted after Lennon was shot to death in 1980. It was a two-car scene with a portrait of Lennon and a graveyard filled with tombstones.

“He was an artist, but also a bomber, recognized as a person who made himself seen by everybody,” said the photographer Henry Chalfant, using the graffiti term for a prolific artist. “At the same time he appreciated the aesthetic side of it. He didn’t do wild style” — complex, interlocking letters — “he had a simple, readable style with great color and interesting forms within the lettering itself.”

Iz's work enjoyed surprising longevity in the days before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began cracking down on graffiti. Elaborately painted cars could run for months or even years. Artists would often gather at certain stations to watch their work and keep an eye on the competition, much like their counterparts did in 15th-century Florence.

After a respite from his work Iz jumped back into graffiti in the 90s, painting cars, but also taking part in the legal graffiti movement, expressing himself on walls set aside for the purpose. He was one of the first artists to work on the Phun Phactory, a 200,000-square-foot industrial building in Long Island City, Queens, that artists began covering with graffiti in 1993. It is now known as the 5 Pointz Aerosol Art Center, or the Institute of Higher Burnin’.

Iz the Wiz sought fame, and found it, but not on gallery walls. His work appeared on the old dusty brown subway cars known as coal mines, and their replacements, called ding dongs for the bell tone that chimes when the doors close. Painting one of those, end to end, Mr. Martin once said, “was like sex in a can.”

*the majority of this blog entry was excerpted from a New York Times piece, published 6/30/09 - thanks to William Grimes*

Coolest Use of a Segway

Hands down this is the coolest use of a Segway I've ever seen.

Herb & Dorothy Vogel- Eyes that See

I can't claim to be an art collector. Yes, I have a couple things that I am terribly proud of, and adore, but when it gets into "collecting" I just can't run with even the small dogs, much less the big ones.

But, as my mother used to say "we do what we want to do." In the case of Herb and Dorothy Vogel this unlikely couple chose to collect modern art.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. "Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment," recalls Dorothy.

In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece.

Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

I'm just sad its not playing in Atlanta yet. If it hits your neighborhood make sure to check it out.