BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you have been following me on Facebook in recent months, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I posted a whole slew of pictures from my high school years. This was brought about by the fact that I happened to stumble across a Facebook Group devoted to KRSH FM 90.1, (Now KRHS FM) the school radio station where I cut my teeth on broadcast media and moreover real, hardcore Journalism, at the direction of a fantastic teacher and faculty advisor, Martha Ackmann. But, I’ll babble on about that in a different blog. (Yeah, just gotta love chasing those chickens, eh?)… You see, the only reason I even brought that up is that it ties in with the fact that I was an avid photographer as well and I worked for the school newspaper and yearbook in that capacity… But, now we are running after a rooster… The deal is, I actually made myself a side business out of photography in the early to mid 90’s.

E K and I were partners with some other folks in a Saint Louis based sound recording studio… Yeah, yeah, I know… What does sound recording have to do with photography? Well, actually that’s an easy question to answer. Recording studios draw in bands; bands need publicity photos and CD artwork. See where I’m going? Yeah, it just sort of made sense… Therefore, we came up with the idea that having it all under one roof just might work. So, I dusted off and reassembled my darkroom, invested in a bit of updated equipment… Well, it was updated back then. Now, not so much. But, I digress… Anyway, back to the story, toss in setting up a couple of wholesale accounts for supplies, and there you go. We had ourselves a part-time photography business.

Well, the story behind the studio and how it eventually fell into financial ruin is a blog unto itself, which in order to protect the innocent will probably never see paper, electronic or otherwise. Suffice it to say, we had ourselves a good run while it lasted, and we actually did quite a few unique, fun, and even at times profitable, photo sessions in conjunction with recording sessions, bands, and even their groupies.

But, here’s the thing… I had pretty much pushed a lot of that completely to the back of my mind. I honestly hadn’t remembered how many shoots we had done until the other day when I was searching out pictures to scan for the whole KRSH thing I mentioned earlier. The whole mess came flooding back to the forefront when I found myself sifting through a 4-drawer file cabinet full of contact sheets, stripped proofs for publicity photos, and tons of negatives.

Yeah, a lot of pictures, both printed and unprinted… Fortunately, they were organized and labeled, which is obviously something I did back before I returned to my natural state of “messy desk habitat”…

Now, just to be annoying, I’m going to switch gears on you. Chase a different feathered fowl so to speak… Trust me, the rooster and the chicken eventually meet up and make cute little yellow chicks. Just give the egg a minute or two so it can hatch… I promise, it really will…

Some of you may remember from the “Mahwage” series of blog entries that I had mentioned E K being on the drill team when she was in high school. Well, because of that I have a tendency to refer to her as having been a cheerleader, to which she always replies, “I wasn’t a cheerleader, I was on the drill team.” It’s not that she has anything against cheerleaders… She just likes to clarify things.  She’s very direct like that… And, she’s evil… Anyway, it would seem that at her school at least, there was a hierarchy. Cheerleaders first, followed several rungs down the ladder by the Drill Team. Kind of a “cool kid caste system”… Okay, I’ll give you that… We had our own “caste system” when I was in high school, and I was right near the bottom of it… Actually, I don’t think I even qualified to even be on it… I think I was on the waiting list to get on the last line of the caste list, or something like that… So, what I am saying is that I get it. Cheerleaders were apparently “cooler” than the girls on the drill team.

Still, when you get right down to it, E K was way up on the ladder in relation to where I was. If I can use my high school experiences as a benchmark, she was in the top 5% of coolness, whereas I was overheated in hell. And, by the same token, the young ladies on the drill team wore uniforms… And, what were those uniforms? Fuzzy sweaters, really short skirts, and saddle oxfords… Or, those little mini-dress looking things in the summer… Anyway,  I rest my case.  The simple fact is, to a zit-faced outcast nerd like myself, if it looked like a cheerleader, wore clothes like a cheerleader, and bounced around like a cheerleader, then it was a cheerleader… And, of course, was therefore the object of many an adolescent fantasy.

Believe me, I’m not trying to be pornographic here… I’m just telling it like it is. But, since pornography has been mentioned, anyone with two brain cells in their head can look at popular media references and see that the whole cheerleader fantasy extends to the adult male as well. Therefore, I really and truly am making an objective observation here…

So, my initial point being this… I may have been a zit-faced nerd in high school, but I married myself a smokin’ hot cheerleader, so bite me! Neener, neener…

Just kidding… Well… A little bit, but kinda serious too… In any case, that right there would be the subjective observation…

Okay, now let’s see if we can get that chicken married off to that rooster…

As I was going through the stacks of negatives in search of nostalgic shots of 16-18 year old journalism students collecting MIPA awards, prattling nonsensically into microphones, or just generally being teenagers who happened to have to good fortune of working at a high school radio station, I ran across a manila folder labeled “B&W Proofs – Kat in Advertisement“.

You see, during the old recording studio/photo studio days, one of our partners actually worked in the darkroom at a local advertising agency. Whenever they would have a local job we had the opportunity to bid on it. And so, one Saturday morning, I received a phone call from my friend, telling me the agency needed an “emergency product shoot with a model” for a big client. They needed proofs and slides by that evening and on top of that they had not yet hired a model. As it turned out, models and photographers were apparently hard for them to come by at the last minute, so they wanted to know if we could handle it. The specs were fairly simple… They wanted us to shoot a roll of Black and White Negatives and a roll of Color Transparencies, (AKA – slides), of a pretty woman, clad in business clothing, filling a tire on a nice looking car, using the client’s product. That product was, of course, a fix-a-flat in a can sort of thing.

So, we loaded up the equipment, ran my relatively new Cutlass Supreme through the car wash… The Cutlass was a company car provided by the computer repair outfit for which I worked full time back then… and then set up a shoot on the parking lot of the studio with our model….

And, as you can see from the pictures, our model was none other than E K herself. Yes… E K… In a matter of a 60-minute shoot and about 2 hours in a darkroom, the Evil One became the hands, face, and legs of “The Pump,” Pyroil’s fix-a-flat in a can. Yep, she was the “Tire Babe” in advertisements and promotional materials around the country. I often wonder if they did up one of those life-sized cardboard cutouts to use as a display in auto parts stores. If they did, something tells me some grease monkey somewhere has one tacked up on the wall in his garage…

At least, let’s hope it’s just the garage…

So, why am I telling you all this? Simple… Besides being one of those little bits of nostalgia that just happened to slap me in the back of the head, there’s an even more important point… An extremely important point, in fact, even if it is purely selfish and a tad bit juvenile… But hey, I’m a guy and it’s my job to be juvenile every now and then…

At any rate, the point would be the following… Not only did this zit-faced, klutzy, outcast nerd marry a cheerleader, he married a model… Yeah… Bite me again.

So, can I get a big ol’ “neener neener” from the crowd?

Yeah, life is good… And, I’m one hell of a lucky bastard… I know that.  But, it really is too bad E K doesn’t have that drill team uniform anymore…

More to come…

Murv

Okay…

For medical reasons I am not going to disclose I have been off solid food since Thursday, therefore I’ve been a bit cranky. Generic Ensure ™ just doesn’t fill the empty space, if you know what I mean. Why am I telling you this? Well, it may have something to do with the events of the day…read on.

Fast forward to today, which was our designated “family” day for the week. That being the day where we do something “fun” as a family. On today’s agenda was “Art in Bloom“…This is where floral arrangers compete to create arrangements out of plant matter that look similar to various given pieces of art hanging in the Saint Louis Art Museum. (For purposes of this blog, I am using the term “art” very loosely…in fact, that is what this blog is really all about.)

Now… Since I have offended folks with my opinions in the past, understand that I am neither poking fun at anyone (other than, perhaps, myself), nor am I making light of floral arrangers, pedantic intellectuals, artists, or docents. My grandmother was a floral arranger and believe me she could have shown these folks a thing or two.

No…What I am about to go on about is the Art Museum. Again, I am using this term “ART” rather loosely (in my estimation.)

Really, what it comes down to is that I think I am about to go on about what a completely uncultured redneck I really and truly am.

Again, hit the fast forward button, and we arrive at the Art Museum in Forest Park, midtown Saint Louis, MO. For those who are familiar with the area, this is, of course, where “Art Hill” is…For those UNfamiliar with the area, Art Hill is a big undulating slope in front of the museum where people flock to in the winter in order to go sledding. I point this out because just about anyone in Saint Louis can tell you stories about Art Hill, even if they have never set foot inside the Art Museum. As you read on, you will discover that the folks who know about Art Hill and NOT the inside of the museum are the normal people (in my opinion).

Anyway, this is also where a major icon of Saint Louis resides. No, not the Arch (aka Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. That is down on the riverfront with such things as Lacledes Landing (a four odd block or thereabouts, cobblestone paved section that houses a ton of bars and eateries) and the Riverboat Casino’s.

Nope, what I am talking about is the big ass statue of the dude on the horse. (King Louis IX of France, actually…but, I like the name, “dude on the horse” better.)

But, I’m digressing, as I usually do…

So, we go into the Museum. Now, understand that an ART Museum is one of the last places on earth I would take myself if I was the one making the choice. However, since this was family day, this expo was going on, and there was a kid activity (AKA “Arrange some wilted flowers in a block of green crap 101, on your own, have fun, hurry up, move along, see ya’ later, sir you can’t use the flash to take a picture of your daughter with her arrangement, even out here in the lobby where there is no art”) this is where we went.

Hang on…it gets better…But let me start with a question…

Have you ever seen one of those movies where people are languidly strolling around an art museum, nodding thoughtfully, and making overly pedantic comments about the use of color, shape, shadow, etc, all while wearing turtleneck sweaters and blazers that have been out of style for two years? Not to mention that the item they are making these pretentious remarks about, as if they are world renowned experts, is usually something so hideous that a velvet paint-by-numbers portrait of Elvis, “the girdle years”, would look good by comparison?

Well, if you have, then you already witnessed my morning and early afternoon. (other than the flower and green crap thing…and getting yelled at by a docent for taking a picture of my kid and having the gall to use the built in flash on the camera so that she actually showed up in the photograph.)

Basically, I spent two hours wandering around this huge building, dodging horribly rude people, looking at the following things:

REALLY OLD Furniture. I mean REALLY OLD. Like antiques from France and stuff. Kinda nice if you like that sort of thing, (I don’t, personally) but none of it looked actually comfortable enough to sit in, on, or even around, so I’m not so sure what was that great about it.

REALLY ODD (not old) Furniture: There was this chair made out of leftover 2×4’s. I kid you not. Pieces of 2×4’s and a slab of a 2×12. Put together with wood screws, and then whitewashed. Only one coat, too. And it didn’t even have a cushion. I actually have enough scrap lumber in my basement to make about ten of them. I’m thinking of going around to art museums and offering them the knock-offs at a reduced rate. Even at a discount I’ll still be a millionaire for an initial investment of $27.32 plus about 3 hours of work.

REALLY OLD Place settings that looked pretty much like the Courier and Ives that we have in our china cabinet downstairs, only the designs on the old stuff weren’t nearly as cool as the ones on the C&I.

NOT SO MUCH OLD Furniture. I mean furniture that is EXACTLY like the furniture my parents had in our living room when I was growing up. Hell, it might have actually been the furniture that was in our living room that someone rescued from the dump and wiped off for all I know. (Yeah, I know I’m old, but not THAT old. Besides, I thought this was supposed to be an ART museum, not a history museum…)

Some small GLASS “SCULPTURES” that looked exactly like some candle holders I bet you could get at  Pier 1 for 5 bucks a pair.

Other than that, the rest of what I saw appeared to be a bunch of UNFORTUNATE MISTAKES.

These mistakes were supposed to be paintings. And sculptures. I think. I’m not entirely certain. You see, they didn’t really have any subject matter. Any that I could readily identify, anyway. Several of them looked like someone vomited and instead of cleaning it up they just smeared it around and then sprayed lacquer on it before hanging it on the wall and giving it a bizarre name like “Oxidized Metal Wires on a Paper Plate” or some such.

Others– one’s that actually HAD recognizable subject matter, looked horribly disproportionate and discolored. If they weren’t completely out of whack colorwise and proportionwise, then they were so horribly drawn as to look like someone simply doodled (poorly) while on the phone then colored it in.

(Note: My daughter, while in Kindergarten, did a self-portrait that ended up hanging in the board of education offices in Jefferson City (the MO state capital) for 30 days. And, yeah, while I am certainly prejudiced where my daughter is concerned, I would put that self portrait by a 5 year old up against just about anything I saw today…)

Believe it or not, there was this huge painting that was apparently worth some inordinate amount of money, and it was nothing but a stick figure (I kid you not) along with some VERY RANDOM splashes of paint, and some word scrawled across it (I can’t remember the particular word, as it was in a foreign language.)

What’s more…ALL of this stuff was protected not only by wandering docents and guards, but by alarm systems that detected such slight movements that my daughter set a couple of them off just because she was so short.

And, remember those people in turtlenecks? They were everywhere. One of them was even nice enough to attempt engaging me in conversation. Unfortunately, being the uncultured individual that I am, when she finished her unsolicited commentary about the particular artist’s use of color and shape, I looked back at her and literally said, “Really? What’s it supposed to be? It looks like an unfortunate accident to me.” (No…I really did. I’m not kidding…And I wasn’t saying it to be mean. I was hoping that she would actually explain to me what it was supposed to be and not just give me a lecture on color and some obtuse shape described only by her waving her hand in a wild gyration.)

Unfortunately, she wasn’t particularly interested in speaking to me after that. Guess I made her nervous.

Now, I did try to go into this with an open mind. And I DID actually see some wonderful photo’s of glaciers done by an artist who uses photography as his medium. I also liked the antique guns and swords. Those were pretty interesting.

Maybe the rest of it wasn’t all that enjoyable because I hadn’t had solid food in several days and I was just crabby. But, I don’t think so. Even if I’d just had a prime rib dinner with all the trimmings I’m pretty sure I would have still considered most of what I saw today a series of horrible mistakes being witnessed by a mess of pedantic folks with nothing better to do than get together and be pedantic with one another.

No. I’m not making fun of them or putting them down. If they think that stuff is art and they enjoy debating the subtleties of this shadow or that shadow on a canvas that is covered with random words and smears of ink, more power to them. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and hey, if what they saw was beautiful to them I’m all for it.

It’s just that…well…to me…Well, let’s just say that I don’t get it.

Must be one of those redneck, guy things…

MR