February 2007
I was at the pizza place around the corner from my apartment last week and as usual I was shooting the shit with the guys who work there while eating a slice at the counter. One of them had to take a call for a delivery order and while he was on the phone he asked the customer to have their credit card ready so the delivery driver could do a rubbing. When he got off the phone, one of his co-workers gave him a funny look and asked, “Did you just tell them we needed to do a rubbing?”
“It could be worse,” I said. “He could’ve said you needed to rub one out.”
(Thank you… I’ll be here all night!)
Near my cube hangs one of the most hideous pieces of art that I have ever seen in my life. I don’t even think it should be called “art” because it looks like finger-painting by a mental patient on crack with Tourette’s. In fact, that’s probably the story the art dealer told the suckers in my office to make it sound more exotic. To make matters worse, this piece is huge and clashes with the design scheme of the whole office. We just moved into this office last fall and it’s decked out in warm earthy tones… a nice change from pretty much every other job I’ve had where my cube and the surrounding areas were white, grey, and/or blue.
While everyone who sees it agrees that it is fugly, I’m probably the only person who finds it offensive. Being a web/graphic designer myself and knowing a lot of arty-farty types, I think it sucks that someone was likely paid a few grand for this piece of shit while there are so many truly talented people who can barely scrape by because they aren’t kissing the right ass. However, I’d pretty much settled down about this after realizing that complaining wasn’t going to get me anywhere because I don’t know the right people yet. Also, my declarations about the painting created a hostile work environment probably did more to actually create one that the painting itself.
This brings me to today, when another piece was brought in to go down the hall a little. The new piece is actually pretty cool, but again the color scheme clashes really bad with the wall color, carpet, etc. While waiting for maintenance to hang it, the internal operations guy came over by our cubes since it was the closest available seating. He made a comment about how they were just here to splash a little color and I said “Can you spash it over here?” and pointed directly to the hideous painting closer to us. I’d been warned that I should probably watch who I complained to about the artwork, so if I’m jobless tomorrow then you know why.
I thought the worst was over when the “Revenge of the Nerds” remake was mercifully canceled, but check out what I saw at the video store today. Yes, it’s a straight-to-DVD sequel to one of the best movies ever and the only romantic comedy that I actually like. It goes without saying that the actors that made the original so awesome wouldn’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole.
Is nothing sacred anymore?!
As if I’m not behind enough on podcasts already, I recently started listening to one called “Bad At Sports” about the art scene in Chicago. True to my obsessive-compulsive nature, I started at the beginning and am up to their 20th episode. I’m not sure if this is something that continues on later, but a subject that they’ve brought up a lot so far is their dismay at how many people flee Chicago for the coasts because they don’t think they can make it here and I have to say that this is something that has annoyed me for some time as well.
I should make the disclaimer here that while I do a lot of creative things, none of what I do could really be considered “fine art.” That said, I’ve heard a lot of complaining by local artists, musicians, etc. who blame this city for their lack of success when the real issue is almost always their lack of talent, motivation, or ability to self-promote. While I’ll admit that there can be a fine line between promoting that annoys and that which genuinely reaches its intended audience, one would think that the chances of success would be a lot better in a city like this with less competition.
Besides, the only way this place is going to get a better local art scene is if people stay here and contribute to it, rather than running away.