The Sandoz Collection - Sandoz Diego Cerveza (the ebook reader .txt) 📗

high velocity and then, bang, boom, smack, crash into the ground of an old barren bean field in rusted repose resting just west of Amarillo. It's visible and visitable from the interstate, interestingly enough.

Now, gas up and head north to the rectangular, (and damn proud of it!) cornhusker, corn happy state of Nebraska.

It's as flat as roadkill after it's been turned to toast by an 18-wheeler; the utility pole is the state tree and the horsefly is the official state bird. It's also where you'll find a gased up and jazzed up enclave of fantastic farm folk/artisans laying claim to being the heavy weight champeenship grease monkey-monkey wrench Hall of Fame trophy winners when it comes to pop culture and chrome. It's one of 8 wonders of the roadhead world. Ladies and Gentlemen...I present to you for your enjoyment and pleasure...Carhenge!!!

The curtain rises in the morning mist as the actors fill the stage.. Beads of sweat form on your brow and Your mouth drops open as you join the audience in an assault of appreciative applause. You gaze in wonder at the mighty "Carhenge" the King Kong of Khrome!. Forget those dreary Druids, this is the ultimate heavy metal knockoff of Stonehenge itself in Jolly Olde England, eh wot?

Got bull testicles? Colorado does and has been long known for it's legendary Rocky Mountain Oysters. Colorado also has altitude and Colorado has attitude, but, it also can induce a damn near mile high art attack at the Swetsville Sculpture Zoo just north of old dharmabum Denver.

Carparts and their second cousins, truckparts and tractorparts, have become part and parcel of the metal sculptured moonscape of the zoo/farm/gallery, Steel and iron have been welded together into shapes resembling large prickly pineapples of polynesian persuasian; gigunga metal ants and humunga metal bugs. There are fish fashioned from joyous junk, and there are enough rusted T-Rexs made of old tractor parts to fill Spielbergs' Jurassic Park!

Metal sculptors who sculpt and welders who wield diabolical welding devices are in the genre top ten of the art worlds hip-parade, but, there is another sculpting movement afoot, Sherlook Holmes! Grab some smoked whitefish, a six pack of Moosehead beer and a handful of sawdust knotty piners, because We're firing up the four-wheelers and snowmobiles and heading deep into the North Country to visit woodland venues of plaid and proud art created by the "youbetcha" crowd.

This is the fabled bar and grill kingdom of pool tables, bowling alleys, guns, ammo, camo and booze, Here, you'll find cocky, as well as half-cocked chainsaw art inspired by Scandinavian lumberjacks with Viking names like Lars, Rolf and Nils. They wear lots o' plaid and Carhart bib overalls and fell trees to the cries of "TTIIMMBBEER".

They also create hardwood masterpieces by sculpting tree stumps and tree trunks into fine looking bucktoothed incisor baring Canadian beavers and hungry, angry, salivating black bears that would scare the hell out of Cujo!.

Legendary Lumberjack Lore is alive and well with the legend of Paul Bunyan and Babe his Blue Ox. Paul left years ago, literally and literarily from the great shite northland of the French Canucks who gave birth to this tallest of woodland tales.

Rumour has it is that he crossed the border as an illegal alien somewhere near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Today, thanks to a compost heap of timbermania, Paul is a full blooded double-axe tossing log rolling red, white, blue, plaid and proud, my country right or wrong 'Merikan citizen. Just as the flag flies at full staff there stand in tribute to his most holy bruteness, a delightfully weird assemblage of lumber monuments, that penetrate the willing 'Merikan landscape like a compliant virgin on prom night.

His boots roam the hard and soft woodlands from downeast lobstah-chowdah coniferous rich Maine to the giant redwoods of far-freakin-out California. Big and bad, the biggest badass Paul of all is a northern Californian, and has the dubious distinction of being the only talking Paul Bunyan statue in the United States. During my last visit to this Pauly anomaly it could only speak English, but, who knows, by now it could very well be bi-lingual, bi-sexual and multi-cultural all at the same time.

Other Pauls of note line the highways and byways of Northern Michigan like so many unemployed concrete and plaster statues waiting in line for foodstamps.

As you enter the Realm of Unemployment in Michigans Upper Peninsula, there's a Paul on the westside of the highway greeting you as you exit the Mackinac Bridge. He's sitting down holding a sign facing the highway. One can only assume that the sign reads "will work for food".

Another Michigan Paul is on the Sunrise Side of the state in the Lower Peninsula and is made entirely of old discarded Kaiser junk carparts. Then..then, well, then there's the story of an Ox named Babe without any balls standing off Highway 23 south of Alpena, Michigan,

So, settle back now, pop open a brew and gather 'round children, I have a tale to tell about an Ox with no balls. Long, long ago, in a galactic bar and grill far, far away, a blue ox named Babe had his ox balls blown off by with a double barreled shotgun by jackpine savages with deerheads on the wall, all drunk. Seems they was drunk.

Drunk as skunks they was, yessiree, and stumbled out of the bar for a bit of beer and buckshot saloonery buffoonry across the highway, all at Babes expense mind you. They, the balls, have never been replaced by ball bearing men nor beasts bearing balls either. One lesson learned though, is that it answered the gender defying question of the ages regarding Babes sexual identity and preferences, and gave meaning to the phrase "breaking your balls"!

Creatures from the mad lagoon of Madison Avenue have created a universe of orbiting planets of commercial kitsch culture that includes a huge Mr. Peanut, tophat and cane in hand near Ft. Smith in Ar-Kansas, to a bizarre Ethel Mermanesque tomato tribute in Collinsville, Illinois to one of 'Merikas fave mondo-condiments, Catsup! Ketchup or catsup, it doesn't matter how you say it, besides you say to-may-to and I say toe-mah-to, it's in Collinsville, Illinois.

Don't be retching at thought of advert art either. Remember, in the groovy '60s old randy Andy Warhol turned Campbells soup into something unfathomably fashionable in the highly unfashionable pre-Seinfeld soup-Nazi blitzkreig of pop culture.

Squaresville, USA. Be there, and be square! It seems that every square towns townsquare has a Statue of Liberty of varying size and stature. Other cities, in lieu of Libery statues, are infested with an array of bronze beasties in the form of sculptures of historical figures from past and present.

The Honeymooners ruled the small screen for years and a statue of New Yawk City's most irrascible bus driver, Ralph Kramden stands guard on a pedestal in front of the Transit Authority Building.

Superman stands tall in the square of Metropolis, Illinois and Spokane, Washington can boast a big bust of Abe Lincoln actually looks more like Hawkeye Pierce on "M.A.S.H" rather then The Great Emancipator.

Long distance information, in Memphis, Tennessee it's pop goes the culture as multiple Elvis sculptures sneer, swivel, shake, rattle and roll on a blue suede cruise along the bbq boulevards of the jukin', jivin', jumpin' jambalaya highway of great gobs of gumbo known as Beale Street.


Artists inspire, but also neep second helpings of inspiration themselves. They need a muse to amuse and one that speaks creatively from deep within. Winston Churchill, no stranger himself to the demands of literary demons, once refered to the muse as more of a demanding mistress that requires more and more on a daily basis of the writers heart, art and soul.


In addition to inspiration, an artist also needs an audience and will take one where he or she can find one, and as we've seen that can be almost anywhere today. In New Yawk City home of culture and Nathans hotdogs, the art comes to your neighborhood, via a Ryder Truck. Dubbed "The Rider Project" some of the City's finest or more revolutionary artists and activists travel the burroughs from the Bronx to Chelsea bringing a truck full of art and social commentary to the masses. Get your Rider Project fix online at http://www.art-anon.org

During your own personal journey and expedition searching high and low for highbrow or lowbrow art in the artistic highlands and lowlands, bear in mind that art is what you feel it is, and when you find it, enjoy it like a good old fashioned stolen, illegal Cuban cigar my stogey stokin' Amigos. Enjoy it too, WHERE you find it, because art has hopped the fence having escaped from the asylum grounds. The inmates have shed their creative straitjackets and are hiding in the bushes, in plain public sight, crazed, existential and bonko wild-eyed in venues that defy the status quo.

Open your bloodshot all-night eyes and enjoy the performance on the cities concrete streets and along the asphalt highways of the rural realms of the midwest; as well as in the hayseed haystacks and on the haughty highrises of the for the people, by the people and of the Peoples Republic of 'Merika. Remember, now, the next time you can't get the Guggenheim to give you a full tilt boogie artistic groove, just check out the subways and the Elvis bathrooms. Hell, if you really have a case of the art attack blues, just load up a basket of your dirty laundry and bop on down to the local Laundromat Louvre to get your laundromat groove!
Toodles and Ta Ta's

E=MC5
Kick Out The Jams, Motherfuckers!"Kick out the jams, Motherfuckers!"
That was the purple-hazed, double-dazed battle hymn of the 1960's. The Late Great Altered States of America.

The Red, White and Screwed. It was an era that ripped the bra off of Lady Liberty to reveal her falsies and hypocripsy. Meanwhile, "Kick out the Jams" was resonating from deep within the bowels of the Motor City from the stage of the Grande Ballroom.

It echoed throughout the concrete canyons of a youthful hipster America. The Grande, for those who may not know it, is to rock n' roll what the tomb of Jesus is to christians, except a much cooler and louder place!. It was a great time to be alive, stoned and crazy.
It was a musio-politico warning shot fired over the head of a disheveled establishment. The tattered flag that represented a faded American dream was emerging from the chaotic mushroom cloud of Flower Power.

The Sixties brought about the assasination of two Kennedy's and a King, not to mention a law and order police meltdown during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Vietnam was a raging drunken bulldyke in a baddass biker bar on too many bennies and dexies, and with too much to prove. The Black Panthers and Angela Davis had "gone to the top of the mountain" too, and realized it was the perfect spot for a sniper.

"Free Huey" and "Burn Baby, Burn" had become the new bestselling militant mantra, pushing "We Shall Overcome" from the top of the Civil Rights pop music charts...and the hits kept on a'comin'. A gagged Bobby Seale sits at the defense table during the Chicago Seven trial where Judge Hoffman judged Abbie Hoffman and his merry band of pranksters, hipsters and Yippee lost boys.

Michigan had spawned the Students for a Democratic Society on the heels of the Port Huron