I grew up in a small town in Kentucky. This town was so small that the population sign didn’t use commas. Heck, neither did their sentences.
Where y’all from?
"Louahvuhl"
I’m a goin’ to the pictures.
Why?
s’Friday.
I’m not saying we were isolated. I’m just saying that eighteen is a late age to know what a liberal is.
When Americans hear you’re from Kentucky, they always ask, did you wear shoes? Nope. Just holsters.
But Kentucky is actually a pretty nice place. It’s got culture, too. University cities. Music scenes. Arts.
I once dated an artist? This girl wasn’t just an artist, she was a fine artist. This means that she loved art so much she rejected all other possible employment on the face of the Earth. Well it’s a fun ride, dating an artist. You get to attend art shows, rub shoulders with sociopaths and autistic people, and other assorted riff raff for whom fingerpainting is the only therapy they can afford.
You think art isn’t important? Just try to take it away from some of these people, see what happens to society. Trust me, you don’t want a cubist giving you a massage. You don’t want an abstract expressionist giving you an enema. You don’t want a surrealist quality-testing your shark cage. Shall I go on? I’ve got more of these. You don’t want an impressionist fitting you for glasses.
Which lens is better? This one? Or this one?
What? This one looks like an LSD trip. The other one is like staring into an eclipse! My retinas! Hey, is the machine supposed to be glowing red hot like that?
Sorry, that’s my assistant’s fault. She had it near the kiln.
This artist I dated had a senior show and I helped her, with some other friends, put the whole thing together. The art, the warehouse where it was being shown, the band, the invitations, publicity – I even injured my back moving a 12 foot tall metal sculpture. Yeah, she was a metal sculpturist. I couldn’t date a duck decoy whittler like Dad warned me.
So she has her show, right, and it’s a huge success.
So she dumps me the next morning. I’m like, but, but, and she’s like, yeah that’s right!
So what did I learn from that, which I can share with you, so you can get some benefit from that really painful experience? After years of reflection all I can come up with is, duck decoys. Seriously. So when it goes to hell you can shrug it off and say, your ducks didn’t even look real anyway.
Yeah? Try telling that to an abstract expressionist. There’s nothing you can say! Duck doesn’t look real, they’ll just say, “Good. I wanted it that way. It’s abstract. If you knew what it was I’d consider that a failure.”
Artists. I thought about being an artist once. Problem was, I wasn’t good enough to be a fine artist, and I wasn’t mundane enough to sell at the Velvet Trucker Jesus flea market table. Only place I could sell my painting was in a lasertag arena. You think I’m joking. I made a sculpture once out of a mannequin and a busted up computer, this guy sees it and says, I’ll give you a thousand dollars for it right now. I said, yeah but you obviously know nothing about art, so no thanks. Amateurs.
You guys like the Mona Lisa? I don’t want to appear ignorant, but – I just don’t get it. They say she has an enigmatic smile but to me it looks like someone who’s posing for a picture but the photographer keeps tinkering with the camera settings, and then when he finally snaps the picture the person’s face is sagging and their attention is wandering around thinking about what went wrong with their life.
I guess in the days before cameras that happened a lot. Go to a portraiture all wearing their Sunday clothes, standing straight. But by the time the artist finishes, you know, they've gotten comfortable. Shoes off, clothes strung around the room. So people’s portraits come out, they’re sitting their half-naked and eating apples. You know, resting their hands in their vests. Girl falls asleep, artist just keeps on painting her. I think Maxfield Parrish was an artist only because they hadn’t invented the spycam yet.
Would Picasso’s Facebook page have any friends? No, because none of his high school classmates would recognize him.
Facebook. You know the only reason I signed up for that was to reserve my name. But next day I look and I have like a hundred messages from people I haven’t seen in twenty years. So, uh, how about that prom? I liked your green tuxedo.
I’ve got absolutely nothing better to do with my time than to leave messages for people I haven’t seen in twenty years. So – you’re on your third CEO job, and your kids are all honor students at Yale Law? I bought a new three-pack of T shirts! I’ve got a red one, a blue one, and a green one. Ok, check back in another twenty years.
The economy is funny. I tell you in a crappy economy you find out who your friends are. One day it’s “American is number one! USA!” and the next day it’s “Where did those Americans get such swelled heads? Spit on them!”
When you’re younger, you care about the politics of idealogies. When you’re older, you care about politics of greed. Those are the choices: ideology or greed. I just wonder if somewhere, on some alien planet out there, there isn’t some happy medium of politics without ideology or greed, or politics either for that matter. And no people either. That’s for me. That’s a party I can endorse. The “no politics” party.
If I had to design a political party, I mean if it were up to me, and you never know, its’ like the job Captive Monkey Louse Picker, I mean, someone’s got to do it, right? Scientist's in there picking lice - "I've got a PhD, dammit!"
Well if I had to design a political party I wouldn’t base it on geography or ideology. I’d base it on height. The rule is, the tallest person is the leader. No votes. No ideology. No arguments or lawyers. Just up against the wall, and we’ll make a little mark, and there you go. And you can’t wear shoes either. I’d call it the Doorbanger Party, cause the candidates would all be hitting their heads on the door frame.
The only problem I could see with this is the inevitable jockey protests. Jockeys. You know I once saw Willie Shoemaker the jockey and his lovely wife. When he put his arm around her, it affected her pantyline. Some people would say, why would you marry a man literally half your size? Is it the money? But it might not be the money. Maybe these women like their men short in the saddle because they like playing horsie, ever think of that? Have you ever played foreplay horsie? Then shut up, you don’t know.
I could never be with a woman twice my size. She’d have to be so big she’d stretch out a scarf.
You know something about living in China? They’re vicious to overweight people over there. Why do you think they eat with chopsticks? So that by the time you’ve finished your meal it’s time to eat again. No chance to overeat. You’d have to be like a typewriter with the chopsticks to eat enough to gain weight over there.
Chew chew chew chew chew Ding!
Yeah mom what you want?
Why is it with Chinese food, you can either have cheap crap ingredients or overpriced crap ingredients? Chinese recipes are great, but if they used quality ingredients too they’d actually get customers and have to provide customer service. Warm can of Pepsi? Two dollar. Stupid American. No taste. Fork it over. Yeah? Here’s two dollars. Now go feed your family for a month and free your uncle from his rock-busting reeducation camp, smart guy. You’re too clever for me.
Well I told you I lived in China. You know why I came back? American Chinese food. Yeah you can’t get it over there. Seriously. You can’t get the little takeout boxes and fortune cookies. You can still get the crappy attitude though. You just need it translated.
No, the real reason I came back is because I missed being able to complain in restaurants. At least here when they blow you off they understand what you said and can mock you with more accuracy.
But living overseas for a while and coming home presents all kinds of little problems. Like, I can’t cuss people out while smiling anymore. I wanna try on a pair of shoes and I gotta wear socks now! Can’t just barge onto an elevator as everyone's trying to get off anymore. Well - now I have to say excuse me.
You know what it’s like returning from Shanghai to a town that doesn’t use commas in its population sign? It’s a bit like when Deputy Barney Fife moved from Mount Pilot back to Mayberry. You know, if Mount Pilot was pollution-choked and swarming with Chinese.
And when you come back from living overseas you see things a bit differently. Like, you begin to realize that the boundaries of the universe are not defined in the colors of your local sports franchise. That your reproductive choices in this world are not bound by a population of a few thousand people. There are billions of people out there! In Asia, meeting a new girlfriend is like going to the Dunkin Donuts. I'll take one with sprinkles, a couple glazed fritters, and some jelly-filled munchkins too.
But most of all, you realize that the place where you grew up could hardly prepare you for the sheer variety and scope of cultural experiences this world has to offer, and that people, though different in ideas, are distributed everywhere in similar measures of smart and stupid, blessed and cursed, good and evil - and that’s just at the local karaoke bar. Oh there’s nothing more sinister in this world than karaoke used for evil.
But most of all you begin to realize that there are three kinds of people in this world: those who cut themselves off from each other, treating other beings as objects to be smited; clothing themselves in flags and robes of authority, uniforms, corporate suits, TNT vests, and high school gym shorts; who cannot love others because they never learned to love and accept themselves.
The second type of people are those who include everyone in the great teeming body of humanity, loving others as they love themselves, harmonizing their spirits with this abundant biosphere called planet Earth, knowing that above all there exists a totality which at once encompasses them and emerges through them like the ocean in the drop and the drop in the ocean.
And finally, the whack-jobs.
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