Andy Laties roves around the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s 2009 festival, armed with a video recording device, using absurdist kvetching to torture people like Bob Sikoryak, Josh Moutray, Seth Tobocman, Doug Bratton, Karl Erickson, Robyn Chapman, Caitlin Plovnik and more.
New Video:
In case you’re still debating whether to come to my party tonight, here’s the menu– (I’m busy preparing these myself right now):
Organic pasta salad with Bulgarian feta, kalamata olives, tomatoes and peppers
Champignon double cream Brie with organic artesanal breads platter
Shrimp wrap with braised arugula, paprika and lemon butter
Fresh marinated mozzarella salad with organic spinach, carrot and tomato
Caramelized organic fennel in olive oil, mushrooms and sunchokes with tarragon
Fresh organic fruit salad with strawberry, banana apple and pear in sweet citrus spice dressing
Wine, local micro-brews and soft beverages
Where: Paper City Studios, Floor 3, 80 Race Street in Holyoke
When: Show starts at 8 pm tonight, April 24th
What: Final Friday Four, Open Performance Salon,
Celebrating the launch of Rebecca Migdal’s daily webcomic Rosetta Stone,
and Featuring readings, music, video, poetry, and a live performance of
The Ursonata, Kurt Schwitters’ epic sound poem in four movements,
with Rebecca Migdal, Andy Laties and Eric Blitz.
$5 donation requested, but no-one will be turned away. Come on down!
“See that curb over there? There is still some blood on it from where my friend hit his head when a trooper pushed him down on it.”
The telephone rang in the campus minister’s parsonage in San Diego. It was a long distance call for me from Montgomery, Alabama, from the steering committee of the National Methodist Student Movement. They were calling all seven of the MSM Regional Directors to see if we would join the MSM students and national staff in Montgomery for the end of the Selma to Montgomery march. I was the Methodist Student Movement Western Regional Director then, in the Spring of 1965, as well as the Wesley Foundation Director and Methodist Campus Minister at San Diego State University.
Could I come the next day and stay for several days? Take your time and think it over, the voice said—take as long as three minutes; we will hold. My first thought was of the people who had been beaten up and killed, including a Unitarian minister, James Reeb. My next thought was that this was indeed the voice of God calling me to stand up for what I believed. I could not say no with a clear conscience to this request. After all, I strongly believed in the civil rights movement, in the struggle for racial equality, and Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of my heroes. After quickly consulting with my wife, I said I would come. We would figure out later how to pay for the plane fare. It was the right thing to do.
The next day, dressed in the campus ministers uniform of the time, a clerical collar and a tweedy sport coat, with my sleeping bag under my arm, I flew to Montgomery. Of course I had to change planes in Atlanta. Everyone who flies in that direction has to change planes in Atlanta. There is a Southern joke that when you die, you first have to change planes in Atlanta before you can go to heaven.
Waiting for my plane to Montgomery, I was strolling around the Atlanta airport terminal. When I passed a group of about five airport workers, all white males, I heard one of the say in a loud whisper to the others, Look, theres a beatnik priest! Good grief, I thought, A beatnik priest?
Standing in line for the plane, a young woman with a huge handbag was in front of me. She turned around and asked, Where are you staying tonight? Startled, I said, I don’t know. Why? She replied that she didn’t know she was staying, either, and was looking for a place. She was a Jewish nurse from New York City whose doctor employers had given her a few days off so she could be present at the end of the march in Montgomery. Her huge handbag was filled with medical supplies they had contributed. She wanted to be there, she said, just in case she was needed.
Oy!
Will the corruption and greed never end? Isn’t there a special place in hell reserved for officials like Blagojevich and Madoff, who abuse their positions, and the trust placed in them by others, in order to enrich themselves beyond all reason?
Let us hope that the monster Mammon, pictured in the 8×8 foot mural below, will devour their souls, to be tormented forever, imprisoned in its dark and smelly maw.
***Monster Mammon lurks menacingly beneath Main Street in this mural by me, Rebecca Migdal (©2008) now on display at Exit Art, NYC.***
BTW you can see this painting, along with works by World War 3 artists Seth Tobocman, Peter Kuper and many of New York’s top politically engaged artists, at:
The Labyrinth Wall: From Mythology to Reality
December 14, 2008 - February 7, 2009
Exit Art
475 Tenth Ave, New York, NY 10018
The paintings were all created in situ on the walls of a labyrinth constructed inside the gallery!
Here’s a detail of my piece:
***Monster Mammon's tentacle drill is already breaking ground on Main Street!***
In other news, THE ICE HAS MELTED, and the various other strange phenomena that have been pursuing me, have finally stopped.
I hope.
***The trees genuflected to the Ice Queen, and those too stiff to bend, were struck down.***
There were visitations, messages from Space, and atmospheric anomalies last week. I’ll tell you the whole story…