The Cafe Society Prayer

Hilary Harkness: "Matterhorn (Mel Bochner)"

Here is a cropped detail from a "revenge painting" by Hilary Harkness, done after she received a brutal critique by Mel Bochner at Yale. As someone who almost had his own MFA degree scuttled by visiting artist Mel, I could relate. I first read about this painting in articles related to the Daniel Clowes film "Art School Confidential." When I learned about the work, I exclaimed, "I must have copy of that painting." I just now found it online. I have censored it by cropping out the naughtiest bits for sharing on this blog.

"....Today on the Yale campus, students still speak of a 1995 painting by Hilary Harkness of Mr. Bochner, which depicts him naked, sliding down an icy slope, being sexually assaulted by a cow. The painting, she says, was her way of turning the tables.

'Mel is very smart and a very good critic,' said Ms. Harkness, who now shows with Mary Boone in New York. 'But he once said to me, 'If I saw your paintings in a window, I would walk right on by.' Maybe he meant that constructively, but it was hard to take that way.'

Mr. Bochner's reaction to the scene with the cow? 'He didn't want to discuss it,' she recalled. 'He said he didn't care for revenge paintings...'"

Matterhorn (Mel Bochner) (detail)

14" by 15.5"          

Oil on Panel      

1995                                      

Io gets her revenge on the gadfly sent by Hera to torture her through all of eternity for the crime of turning her husband Zeus on.

Hilary Harkness

Daniel Clowes

"Art School Confidential" is a four-page black-and-white comic book story by Daniel Clowes. It originally appeared in issue #7 (November 1991) of Clowes' comic book Eightball and was later reprinted in the book collections Orgy Bound and Twentieth Century Eightball. It inspired the 2006 film of the same name. A color version of the comic was included in the published version of Clowes' original screenplay for the film.

The comic is a satire of American art schools, presented in the manner of a sensationalistic exposé and ostensibly based on Clowes' own experiences at the Pratt Institute. (The story is signed "By D. Clowes, B.F.A." and a Pratt Institute diploma appears on a wall in one panel.)

According to Clowes in a 2006 interview, "Art School Confidential" was:

Literally something where I had four pages left (in Eightball #7) and I had to turn the issue in. I said, "Well, I'll do something about art school that will amuse my ten friends who went." I really thought nobody else would comment on it or even notice. As it turned out, every single one of my readers was either in art school or had some affiliation with it. They all responded overwhelmingly (and) were all certain I had gone to the same art school they had. The story took on a life of its own for a while.… People would Xerox it and put it up on the bulletin board at school. Somebody else would take it from there and Xerox it again. There were rumors that it had been Xeroxed so many times that nobody could discern the art style anymore. It became a kind of folk art.

The Quotes of Steven Wright

1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

2 - Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.

3 - Half the people you know are below average.

4 - 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

5 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

6 - A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

7 - A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

8 - If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

9 - All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.

10 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

11 - I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ..... But she left me before we met.

12 - OK, so what's the speed of dark?

13 - How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

14 - If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

15 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

16 - When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

17 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

18 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.

19 - I intend to live forever ... So far, so good.

20 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

21 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

22 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

23 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

24 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name

25 - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

26 - A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

27 - Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

28 - The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

29 - To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

30 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

31 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

32 - The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

33 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.

34 - If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

35 - If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

Frank Kelly Freas "MAD-sterworks"

Hunter S. Thompson: Still Gonzo After All These Years...

Don Mangus Now on YouTube

I've now posted a series of my "Don-umentaries" on YouTube. I'm the new Oscar Levant. View at your own risk.

"Smirk: The Don Mangus Story"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6r9p6AaqGg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttKVQD5--ZY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRsZhmdVclI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVH-p4HaS58

Steve Martin On Goals (SNL Season 2 Episode 14)

Let's get smirked --- really smirked.

"Excuse me! I feel good tonight, because, uh.. well, I've finally got a goal in life, and that's.. that's what pleases me, is to be able to have a goal, and this is why I'm so happy, because -- it's important -- the thing you have to learn, in having a goal, is not to set an impossible goal, something too high you can never reach. You gotta have a series of smaller goals, that you can accomplish, and slowly work your way up. And this is what I have done. That's why I'm so happy. My goal: right now, I want to be the all-being master of time, space and dimension. Then, I want to go to Europe ---- I think."

Speaking of Thinking Ouside the Box: Magic Twinkies

Here's my plan to save Twinkies. Buy the rights to manufacture the famous cake snack, and then infuse its delicious creme center with medical marijuana/THC -- thus the consumer has his medicinal and munchie needs met in one irresistible dessert -- The Magic Twinkie. Estimated retail cost (before insurance co-pay) $20.00. Available only in Colorado and California, while supplies last.

Thinking Outside The Box

I started thinking "oustside the box" in first grade at Lake Otis Elementary School when I had a contentious argument with my teacher during my alphabet recital of the letter "z." I pronounced it "zed" thanks to having lived in Calgary, Canada for two years prior, where they pronounce "z" in Commonwealth English.

My teacher punished this academic insubordination by giving me a "timeout" in the small, dark space created by the open classrom door and the interior wall. She then pressured me further, by squishing me and leaning against the door with her full-sized figure. Even so, like the Virgil Hilts character (played by Steve McQueen) the legendary "cooler king" of The Great Escape, I still wouldn't submit "...w, x, y, zed, zed, zed!"

So, has anyone seen my box? Where is that friggin' box anyway? The closest thing I have to a box now is a empty. crumpled Half Price Books shopping bag.

From yee wiki:

Thinking outside the box (or thinking beyond the box) is to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking.

The term is thought to derive from management consultants in the 1970s and 1980s challenging their clients to solve the "nine dots" puzzle, whose solution requires some lateral thinking.

The catchphrase, or cliché, has become widely used in business environments, especially by management consultants and executive coaches, and has been referenced in a number of advertising slogans. To think outside the box is to look further and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking beyond them.

The Nine Dots Puzzle

The "nine dots" puzzle. The goal of the puzzle is to link all nine dots using four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pen and without tracing the same line more than once. One solution appears below.

One of many solutions to the puzzle at the beginning of this article is to go beyond the boundaries to link all dots in 4 straight lines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Yp2L6c2KM

Oh, So Wrong....

Hot Pink Batman: Criminals Are a Superstitious Cowardly Lot

I made fun of the Turkish Phantom for wearing a fire engine red costume, but here's Batman donning hot pink togs. Robin tactfully describes them as "red," but in the dim Batcave the costume appears a bit more flamboyant than mere red.

Hot pink is surely the kiss of death for the Cowled Crusader's famed credo, "Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible...!"  

A Priceless Modern Masterpiece:

One of Cassius M. Coolidge's classic "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings

Politics: Huey Long Had It Right

Huey Long speaking at the 1932 Democratic National Convention in support of the nomination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down.”— Huey Long, from his famous speech, ‘High Popalorum and Low Popahirum’

Poppa's Got a Brand New Gag

I've got a new gag. When people ask me what I do for a living (at the coffee shop), I tell them with a straight face that I'm a "Forensic Phrenologist" -- that is, I examine the lumps on dead people's skulls. This always gets a rousing laugh from the doctors in the crowd.

I sometimes add the  background remarks that after I got my Doctorate in "Spin," I went for my PhD in "Ethical Topology" and taught at the junior college level for a few years. But you can only train so many would-be politicians, journalists, and financial advisors, so I then quit to become a Forensic Phrenologist.

"Those that can do, those that can't teach."

The Know-It-All

Here's an uproarious book I identified with (perhaps a little too much), A. J. Jacobs' The Know-It-All.

33,000 Pages

 
44 Million words   

10 Billion years of history  

One Obsessed man   

Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.   To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but unconvinced.   With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child.

The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

It Only Hurts When I Smirk: The Best Student He Ever Had

This prank evolved years ago from a comic con incident in Austin, Texas, thanks to the help of pop culture huckster, Denny. I had just scored a rare Alexander Gallery art catalogue on Frank Frazetta when Denny demanded to lay his hands on it.

“I can do a perfect fake Frank Frazetta autograph. I used to practice his signature night and day when I was thirteen,” Denny boasted. “Let me do it! Watch. I need a Pilot Razor felt tip pen, though.”

“I’ve got one. Go ahead, let’s see it,” I answered, immediately putting the pricey collectible at risk.

Sure enough, Denny had indeed mastered the flourishes of the fantasy master’s ornate signature -- it was perfect.

“The title page is lacking a certain something, don’t you agree? It’s a bit ‘blah.’” I teased Denny.

With that, Denny added the uplifting inscription, “To Don – you’re a God.”

A new tradition was launched. Anytime I’d buy an autographed copy of a secondhand book, I’d add the now-obligatory “To Don -- you’re a God” inscription above each signature. At book signings, I would wheedle authors like contemporary crime writers Greg Rucka or George P. Pelecanos to add it to the title page of the new novels they were hawking. Mr. Pelecanos inscribed and signed my copy of King Suckerman without protest.

I had the goofy conceit that when I dropped dead, the sharpies who raided my bookshelves would be beside themselves with awe and greed, “Wow -- all these writers thought this fellow Don was a God. He must’ve been amazing. Let’s highlight his library with a special gold ink section in our next sale catalogue.”

My brother fell for the original fake Frazetta inscription during one of his Christmastime visits.

“Do you really know Frazetta?,” he asked in wonder.

“Oh, yeah, he’s a really wonderful guy,” I lied.

I wrote my most inspired inscription at my college professor’s retrospective show, held in 2002 at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary Museum. Karl Cornfield had retired from SMU, but back in the day he was a near-messianic mentor to countless acolytes. He had the most competitive “Advanced Drawing” classes in the Southwest. Cornfield’s courses, over three decades, grew legendary, and were deemed cornerstones of the BFA and MFA art degree programs.

Countess students passed through Karl Cornfield’s rolls. Most honed their skills, thanks to his tyrannical tutelage. In 1983 Cornfield wrote the seminal drawing text, Penetrating the Palimpsest, featuring candid photos of his tyros slinging compressed charcoal in the big art studio on the third floor of the Mudge Art Building. He proclaimed their Cornfield-goodness with his effusive case studies. Having a sketch selected for Cornfield’s book was his ultimate seal of approval. The best-selling blockbuster stayed in print for at least six editions, so Cornfield’s pupils had the chance to impress their own kids.

Cornfield motivated his flock by culling the few drawings he approved of, and pinning them on “The Wall” for impromptu class-wide commentaries. A drawing had to be “quite special” in order to make it up on “The Wall.” Cornfield’s drawing sessions stretched across three hour blocks, twice a week, and the each time the class would sketch itself silly to win a bit of that Wall-love. I certainly did. After a while, certain pet students would emerge, and they’d hog up more and more wall-time, with drawing after drawing, class after class, and semester after semester. These anointed few were praised to the high heavens, while the rest of us glowered, ego-starved for even a meager dollop of recognition from the great Cornfield. These class stars would be eventually be compared to “the giants of years past,” for Cornfield’s own “SMU hall of fame.”

I took Cornfield’s classes during the mid-to-late seventies, and the big Mudge art studio would be as silent as any sacred place, with the true-believers intent in their quest for Cornfield glory. The only sounds heard were those of nail-hard conte crayons and whispy vine charcoal sticks scraping across acres of 18” x 24” newsprint sheets, accented with the staccato whumps of Magic Rub erasers.

Once, I profaned this consecrated silence. I unexpectedly broke wind, thanks to the greasy fried salmon balls soaked in tepid tartar sauce, served for lunch in the University’s “crap-eteria.” I startled even myself when I honked out a fortissimo F# on my butt trumpet. Humiliated, I followed the stinky solo with a nervous horselaugh. No one else even snickered. Those zealots just continued hammering away at their gesture drawings in devout silence, charcoal dust flying everywhere.

My classmates were hell-bent on being picked as the cream of Cornfield’s crop with a fanatical focus. In a major buzzkill, an art student caste system had sprung up with those who were “the chosen” at the top, lording it over the others. Years later, after we’d all graduated, these Cornfield-fed hierarchies of hubris remained in place at all art openings and museum shows.

Here was my chance to topple the decade-old Cornfield dynasty at Karl’s museum retrospective. I’d arrived early at Cornfield’s show and was the first to buy his exhibition catalogue. I immediately rushed it to Karl and cajoled him to sign it.

“Hey, Professor Cornfield, just inscribe it “To Don, the best student I ever had,” I requested.

Karl, who often blinked when nervous, looked shell-shocked by my request, and made like a pepper-sprayed Shih Tzu. His writing hand was cocked mid-air and cognitive dissonance rippled across his confused face. Obviously, he didn’t agree that I’d been his best student and didn’t know what to write. At last, he just scribbled his name, and handed the catalogue back to me, wordlessly. He quickly spun about-face to start a new conversation with an admiring art matron.

Fortunately, I had loaned Cornfield the very pen that he used to autograph my catalogue. I slinked off to a corner, and added the missing inscription myself, neatly placed above his signature.

Then I lurked near the entrance, biding my time for the bona fide pack leader of my days in Cornfield’s class, super-sycophant Becky-Sue Butkiss, to make the scene. Sure enough, Becky-Sue soon showed up with an art school posse. I greeted them and waved the pamphlet enticingly, “Hey, Becky-Sue, check it out. The MAC published a full-color catalogue of Karl’s career retrospective.”

She gushed, “Oooh. Let me see. Are there any pictures of us (meaning her) in Karl’s classroom?”

Becky-Sue’s enraptured expression soon changed to that of a jilted lover’s, as she found my forged inscription. You could see her dismay, “What’s this? Don – Karl Cornfield’s best student? But that was me. My drawings always made ‘The Wall,’ not his.”

That was such a kick, after the miffed Becky-Sue thrust the catalogue back at me, I couldn’t help but share the “best student” inscription with every alumnus who visited Cornfield’s retrospective. Their reactions? Pretty much identical to Becky-Sue’s.

1970 Chick Magnet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSHo3j72fIo&feature=related

It Only Hurts When I Smirk: Gabe and Grace



Gabe resembled writer Henry Miller who is shown here.

 Even in the early eighties I knew the old duplex I lived in was an anachronism living on borrowed time. The urban blight of Dallas had steadily surrounded the 100-year old former farmhouse. I lived in the place for the final decade-and-a-half of its lifespan. The joint had a debatable bohemian charm, and was nicknamed the Fabulous Funnybook Shack of Power by Wezzo.

My retired landlord, Gabe, had owned and successfully managed a string of Dallas apartment units for over three decades. After he sold off those properties, this was to be his last toehold in Dallas. I moved in before starting a stint as a MFA student at SMU. My grad student pal, Paul, had moved out of the shack and into his fiancee’s McMansion in University Park. Gabe and Grace seemed tickled pink to have another young art student as their newest tenant.

“I broke every rule in investing when I bought this place,” he told me. Gabe was once a machinist. He’d learned his trade in New York City during the dirty thirties. His wife, Grace, was a sweet lady filled with musical talent and impish humor. She was born and raised in Dallas, and at one time, held a violin chair in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Gabe and Grace relocated from the Big Apple to Big-D in the fifties. Now, they’d retired, mostly to Daytona Beach.

Gabe, an energetic 70-year old, built a dividing wall in the farmhouse, turning it into two small units. He built a shower and kitchen in each half. Each unit had two doors. The FFBSOP was as out-of-whack as an amusement park funhouse. One night Davo declared that it was a truly spooky place that Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be proud to call home. Guests often got seasick the first time they came to visit. The place was insanely whopperjawed. If I’d dropped a baseball at the front door, it would’ve rolled to the back of the shack lickety split. There were few level spots or right angles to be found.

There was no wall insulation to speak of and the only air-conditioning I had came from a 2400 BTU window unit. The overworked beast made a loud buzzing rattle, and wheezed out only the faintest hint of a breeze that dissipated into nothingness five feet from the blower.

This rumbling behemoth would “cool” the house at night from a sweltering 95 degrees down to a barely-bearable 89 degrees. If you were weak-willed and ran the unit for a whole night, you’d be busted flat by a three-figure electric bill. Therefore the unit’s use was strictly rationed, as the last-straw “I can’t take it anymore” failsafe. The record-melting Summer of 1980 had over 100 days of 100-degree heat – it remains a legendary beat down.  A musty smell in the FFSOP, probably from black mold, was pervasive.

My apartment came furnished with Space Age bachelor pad “Googie”-styled tables, lamps, chairs, and a tall chest of drawers. The small gas stove and refrigerator might have been hauled of from the set of The Honeymooners. Every three weeks, I had to defrost the freezer compartment of refrigerator as it grew more clogged with hoarfrost.

A "Googie" style table.

Gabe laid out my apartment in true “shotgun shack” fashion –  three narrow rooms in a row. Up front there was the “living room” (a cramped storage space now jammed with funnybooks and artwork); next came the bedroom with its queen sized bed,  a closet, a chest of drawers, the TV/Hi-Fi setups, and the life-sustaining window unit. Lastly came the kitchen/dining room, with a small bathroom (and a door) branching off to the left of the narrow hallway that lead to the kitchen. The living room had a door, and I hung a blanket over the portal to the kitchen, so as to trap any cooled air in my bedroom.

In winter, the joint was heated by two old gas-powered wall space heaters, only one of which was vented. A 40-gallon hot water heater stood in the corner of the kitchen, next to the sink. The living room and bedroom had bilious wall-to-wall carpeting, while the kitchen and bathroom had dingy linoleum flooring.

The front of our duplex faced Oliver Street. It was dug in on a “half-lot,” and had a fenced-in side yard with a tool shed. Opposite this, on the other side of the duplex, was a semicircle turn-in “driveway” from the blighted alley. I’d park my car on this weedy patch of land, under two gigantic elm trees, next to my bedroom window. The front entrances of the duplex units shared a common wooden porch. A three-foot high wood slat fence, complete with a hinged gate, screened off the  “front yard” and a short sidewalk from Oliver Street. A second six-foot high wood slat fence separated the shack from an adjoining parking lot at the back of the low-rise that faced McKinney Avenue.

Believe it or not, the FFBSOP was a dream palace compared to the even more squalid “carport apartment” where I’d lived after graduating with my BFA in 1978.

The upside of the FFBSOP was cheap rent. I paid $100 (plus bills) every month to Gabe, for about 15 years. On the downside, I endured a host of hair-raising domestic dilemmas such collapsed clay plumbing, petty property crime, and pest control from Hell. I’ll save the brain-cringing tales of terror featuring roaches and rodents for my other yarns.

Gabe and Grace lived in their half of the duplex about a month and a half, twice a year, as they made a roundtrip roadtrip from Daytona Beach, to Dallas, and then on to Ft. Collins, to visit their son, Dennis. If anything broke while Gabe was gone for nine months out of the year, I had to either fix it myself (highly unlikely) or suffer until Gabe came back into town to fix things (almost always the case).

The thing was, the old shack was so out-of whack, that you couldn’t simply buy replacement parts at the hardware store. You usually had to machine, build, or sculpt the solution. A carpenter, electrician, plumber, or handyman all could have been on call 24/7.

While in town, Gabe seldom, if ever, spent money on his home projects. He put the “pack” in packrat, and would drag cast-off crap home just so he could use it. He was the Jack-of-All-Jury-Riggers. Gabe didn’t just “make lemonade out of lemons,” he whipped up a Lemon Drop cocktail -- using only the rinds.

The exterior of the Shack was painted a sickly “institutional” green. It wasn’t a rich, deep green, such as Forest Green, Peacock Green, Jewel Green, or Kelly Green, it was an unsettling hue; one you might find in a dehumanized WWII-era military base or prison compound. The Saccharin hue was fine for mint-flavored ice cream, but not so appealing for a house. Browsing online, I found a hue that’s a close match, named “Dewmist Delight.” Check it out. Gabe blew my mind when he scored a pile of abandoned vinyl siding the exact same tint as the old exterior. He re-covered the entire shack himself, for free.

Imagine a whole duplex painted in Dewmist Delight.

Gabe was into installing “home security measures.” He devised several after our lawn mower was stolen from the tool shed. He first hauled in bulky hunks of jackhammered road concrete and dragged them from his van (also painted the same green as the Shack) into the side yard. Then he stacked them loosely into six or seven inverted pyramids, with all the weight precariously balanced on the apexes. If a foolhardy trespasser jumped over the fence, leaping before looking, he would, it was hoped, jostle one of the unstable piles and snap his ankle like a dry twig.

Not quite an inverted pyramid and not concrete chunks, but you get the idea.
Imagine a 5-foot-tall pile.

Gabe screwed a wicked saw-toothed metal strip along the top edge of the tool shed door, If a burglar gripped the ill-fit door to wrench it open, he’d almost certainly rip his fingers open instead. Gabe showed rare restraint when he opted not to rub dogpoop (as an infectant) over the jagged metal teeth.

Gabe “hardened the target” further by running bailing wire from the interior of the door through numerous eyehooks to a hole he’d drilled through a pivoting metal plate. The plate held back a spring-loaded striking pin that, once released, would slam into a .22 shell and shoot it off. The bullet served primarily as a noisemaker -- but who knew where the slug might land? My friends were too spooked to examine the Rube Goldberg-like crimestopper.

I mentioned petty property crime earlier. Weirdness was always going down in the alley. Once, someone illegally dumped two blown-out sleeper sofas on my vacant “driveway.” I called Goodwill thinking they’d thankfully haul the castro convertibles off as a generous donation. It was not to be. Goodwill only accepted lightly used furniture, not pieces of junk like these.

Gabe and I dragged the sofas to the Oliver Street curb. The City of Dallas would eventually haul them off as part of their large trash pick-up service, unless they just issued a code violation instead. They sat there, rain and sunshine, for three months, as neighborhood eyesores. Meanwhile, Gabe dismantled the metal tubing skeletons of these sofas. We spent an afternoon flattening the ends of the tubing with five-pound sledges. Then we bolted the tubing to my living room window frames – voila, homemade burglar bars. “Swords to plowshares,” I thought. From property crime to crime prevention -- that was pure Gabe.

While in Colorado Gabe would collect old rocks, historic barbed wire, and fragments of abandoned railroad steel. He took two pieces of early-20th century railroad steel and built a deadbolt receiver “sandwich” for my front door. He'd noticed some scratches near the lock left behind by a screwdriver. The steel “bread” of this security sandwich was secured on either side of the door frame with 16-inch long bolts, washers, and large nuts. Gabe drilled holes in the hardened steel, fed the bolts through the “metal and door frame sandwich,” and hacksawed off their excess lengths on the interior side. Gabe added the washers and nuts, and then hammered the ends of the bolts so the nuts couldn’t ever come loose.

The last step was to caulk the bolt heads on the exterior of the door so no screwdriver or pry bar could get leverage. Short of a direct hit from pickup truck, the deadbolt receiver/doorframe would never be breached -- and maybe not even then. The wall might cave in, but the “sandwich” would probably hold. Sadly, the whole point of the security measure backfired when the fifties-era lock jammed and I couldn’t throw the deadbolt to open the door. I only had my alleyway door now.

Gabe was out of town, so I had to hire a skilled carpenter to build a new custom-fitted two-by-four and metal bracket door barricade. It cost about $400, all told (sadly, four months rent). When he returned, Gabe was impressed by this old-school “Katy, bar the door” gimmick, but still added a few minor modifications of his own.

While the front door was now totally “hardened,” somehow we neglected to shore up that second, dodgy alleyway door. After my apartment was burgled, Gabe was inspired to design his most diabolical home defense system yet. He electrified the alleyway doorknob with a transformer plugged into my kitchen’s 120 volt electrical outlet. Anyone who gripped the metal knob would find himself shaking hands with Reddy Kilowatt and performing an electric boogaloo. Dah-dah-dah-dit -- daah-dit. Dah-dah-dah-dit-- daah-dit.



Shake hands with Reddy Kilowatt'

 Although Gabe insisted the shock delivered wouldn’t be lethal, I wasn’t sure. Wary of potential torts, I chickened out. I didn’t have the guts to leave Gabe’s shock-trap connected. While I admired the genius behind Gabe’s mantrap, I couldn’t tolerate the risk of hurting a kid or mailman. When Gabe left, I secretly disconnected the transformer’s oversized alligator clips from the "Doorknob of Doom.”

Gabe and Grace lived like Spartans in their half of the duplex. Aside from an upright piano, a few chairs, a TV, and a card table, there was little decor. They’d play cards, read library books, watch TV, or Grace would play boogie-woogie on the upright.

When I went to my first visit in their half of the duplex, I was dumbstruck at the sight of their TV antenna. That’s right, the flippin’ TV antenna. Insted of installing it atop the roof, Gabe had hung a colossal RCA Outdoor 60-mile antenna upside down from the ceiling of his living room. Its mast was mounted with a swivel so that Gabe could spin the metal monstrosity freely in any direction until he at last achieved crystal-clear reception. He sacrificed his whole living room space to the glory of this antenna rig. He couldn’t have hogged up more space if he’d superglued a 8-foot tall Christmas tree up there. We watched a Victor Borge show on PBS, and Grace laughed in delight at Borge’s zany musical humor while I, in turn, laughed madly at Gabe’s antenna.

As I hope I have conveyed here, Gabe and Grace were more than landlords to me. They were like eccentric grandparents. Gabe, who’d suffered a heart attack or two, would often repeat his earnest dietary wisdom -- avoid a steady diet of hamburgers. “Don’t eat cheeseburgers, Don. The grease’ll block up your heart arteries. We didn’t know any better back when I was a kid, but now we do. Don’t eat too much red meat.” Grace would add retirement tips, “Start an IRA Don. You have to start saving for retirement early. Save your money and put the full $1,500 in, every year.” The sweethearts really had my best interests at heart.

I was fascinated, watching Gabe work on his projects. His homestyle fry-shaped fingers were blunted and misshapen from being mashed so many times from fabricating metal parts. However, they remained nimble, and he had fine motor skills that would rival a surgeon’s.

If you want to see Gabe for yourself, he appears in a bit part in the Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando Western, The Missouri Breaks, appropriately cast as a casket maker. The filmmakers wisely dubbed out his Brooklynese.  Gabe wore thin gold wire frame glasses and resembled the older Henry Miller. As it happened, he also looked like my dad.

Dad was handy at home carpentry himself. Unfortunately he had this horrible habit of blowing his stack and going absolutley apecrackers whenever a project hit a snag, as it always did. He’d yell and scream with furious, uncontrolled rage. My brother and I who were called upon to be his helpers were traumatized. We never knew exactly when “Mr. Hyde” was going to explode, just that he would.

Dad used to howl and cuss up a blue streak every time he used his hotglue gun. He had a technique where he would ignore the gun’s gluestick-feeding mechanism and impatiently jam the solid sticks into the red-hot heating element with his thumb. He’d push and push, harder and deeper, until at last, he’d scorch his thumb on molten glue.

My brother once accused him of being a masochist and doing it on purpose. Dad just laughed. Bullseye.

As a result of all these emotional outbursts by my dad, I developed what cognitive-behavioral psychologists term a “conditioned response” or “learned helplessness.” I developed an unshakable phobia of tools and any kind of repair work. By high school, I was petrified that I’d humiliate or hurt myself in the mandatory shop class. This loss of confidence was no doubt an early form of my social phobia.

As I watched Gabe tinker, I was flabbergasted that he never ever, not once, lost his temper. Since Gabe resembled dad, my "classical conditioning" kicked-in, and I’d secretly cringe and brace myself for a rant that never came. Eventually I was able to “desensitize” myself to a great degree by watching Gabe work so calmly.

Progress never sleeps, or so they say, and Gabe sold the FFBSOP in 1995. He offered it to me for $5,000, a pittance at the time. It was a generous offer, but I knew deep down, with my phobias, I’d never have the wherewithal to maintain the Shack. It would’ve cost a small fortune to hire tradesmen for the constant repairs. The door barricade alone had cost me $400. The City of Dallas was always slapping us with code violations, no doubt called in by realtors, who were drawn to the shack like buzzards to road-kill, eager to scarf down the half-lot and spit it back up for a quick profit.

Gabe sold the Shack to a young landscape architect who worked across the alley. I stuck it out for a while, but loud, low-life neighbors in Gabe’s old space made the Shack unbearable. After about a year, I jumped ship to Willetta’s apartments near Henderson and Ross Avenues.

By 1998 the FFBSOP was flipped and combined with the adjoining low-rise’s lot. Both places were scraped to make way for a new apartment complex. Without Gabe to tend to it, the 100-year old farmhouse finally gave up the ghost, cast into the Potter’s field of Dallas housing history.

Still, the FFBSOP, fond memories of Gabe and Grace, and the Shack’s uproarious hardships are still standing on a netherworld half-lot of my dreams.

A is for Armegeddon

One of the best ways to deal with with anxiety is to expose yourself to situations and thoughts that make you uneasy, rather than avoid them. As your mind is trained (or conditioned), through repeated exposure and response prevention (ERP), that nothing harmful is happening, a type of learning overwrites the stark feelings of fear and avoidance thanks to the moderating influence of the cortex. Fear has nothing to do with rational logic, it's the lymbic system's lightning quick emotional response, a evolutionary survival mechanism gone into overdrive. When successful, this form of habituating the mind to phobia is termed extinction. However, the learned fears are still encoded in the lymbic system and under certain stressful conditions, the possiblity of relapse is there, and a "refresher course" to learn not to give into fear might be neccessary.

Now, who's afraid of the end of the world? Everyone, it seems. What's the official Mayan date -- December 21, 2012? This has freaked out several people I know. It's the great existential anxiety. I've read that 99.99% of all life in Earth's history has gone extinct. Why should we be different?

I found A is for Armegeddon in the humor shelves of the book store. Take a moment to expose yourself to every dark fear of total annihilation known, in the clever Table of Contents' Periodic Chatastrophic table show below. You'll soon realize you'll just have to live with uncertainty, and realize how pointless it is to even worry about the Doomsday. We'll never see it coming. My favorite is the super volcano scenario. Lose the fear, and just enjoy your time on Earth.

Richard Horne’s beautifully illustrated new book A Is for Armageddon: An Illustrated Catalogue of Disasters is the perfect last-minute gift for the end of days alarmist on your holiday list. Check out the table of contents above — a periodic table which illustrates some of the many threats to your life, from natural occurrences to man-made disasters and universal catastrophes — and you’ll inevitably find yourself in the fetal position, bracing for Doomsday. Click here to view the full size version.

Smirk-Free Living

 "Hello all you happy people ... you know what? I'm the hero." -- Droopy Dog, Dumb-Hounded, 1943