Squandering Talent

Tom Leherer, on one of his records, quips that, 'When Mozart was my age, he'd been dead for two years.' (Or something to that effect, no time or patience to get an exact quote from the Lobster's Claw).

I enjoyed using this line when I was 21 using Scotty LeFaro, the great bassist of Bill Evans' finest trio as an example. But we've all seen it. Even in office life, the Vice President of Operations where I work is not only younger than me, he was hired shortly before me, promoted, left the company for a couple of years and came back to advance to ever higher ranks

Power to him, too, because while he was gone I got to try my hand at being in charge of more than me and I fucked the dog so royally I expected to be fired. Instead, I got to go back to doing what I do well.

What I do well is not babysitting adults. What are termed 'soft skills' in the seminar trade are not my strong suit. Witness the fact that I describe my own performance with a reference to bestiality. Think about what a review given by me as a supervisor might be like, considering that I also had an emotional stake in all my hires and reports succeeding despite evidence that I'd made some very loud and smelly farts in the hiring arena.

But this sidewalk artist, I think this is the second time I've gotten a series of photos of this guy's work emailed to me. I love it, but instead of e-mailing it around I'm probably violating the shit out of copyright laws by hosting the larger images (click on the image to see it in full glory) and making thumbnails of them. For both of the visitors this site attracts, I hope this entertains. It's better than anything I ever did with the graphic arts, music or literature. This guy is amazing.

If this post is a violation of the intellectual property rights (or even the wishful thinking) of the artist in question, I hope the interested party will let me know and I'll take the shit down.


Meantime, I'm blathering on (an exercise in squandered talent itself, if a lesser one than the sidwealk chalk freak)...

For that matter, I'd argue that the sidwealk chalk artist has accomplished more than I have because I'm using my sorry blog to promote his art.

He's not using his blog to pimp anything I've created. As far as I know, anyway.

Maybe shows like Star-Search and it's clones (American Idiot for instance) exist to make even me look accomplished by comparison. I liked the Gong Show better, though: it gave Rex Reed a legitimacy he never enjoyed as a movie critic.


But then, the Gong Show had a prize of (if memory serves) $516.32. Since that's what it costs to fill both tanks of my family's cars some weeks, it can be laughed at, though if invested in gold as an inflation hedge, it would be worth at least $150 today (for you yougsters: gold was way overpriced in the Carter years).

And in any case, 'We'll be right back with more...stuff,' actually translated to some good shit in Chuck Barris' day. Well, sometimes. The Gong Show had a lot more variety, higher peaks and deeper valleys than the ersatz talent shows network TV pushes these days.

Come to think of it, with all the hoo-haw that was raised over W.'s attempt at appointing a complete crony to the Supreme Court, Paula Abdul had no prior judicial experience, did she?

Oh, and with the sidewalk art (this post is about sidwalk art, remember?) if you look at it from the 'wrong' side, the 'stuff' is fucked.

Almost as fucked as defending the President's Supreme Court nominations by way of American Idol. Wouldn't it be nice if we all had mallets and could just go 'gong' the President in Chief. You could line up all the candidates in the wings and see if any of them can get the $516.32. Believe it or not, hundreds of people actually file for the office every four years. In 1992, I did an article on third party candidates, and started with a request from the Federal Election Commission for a list of everyone who'd filed.

There were over 300 names on the list. Anyone who's 35 and has the filing fee (I think it was a few hundred bucks), and can prove they meet the citizenship by birth and other 'criteria' set forth int he Constitution, is technically running for President. Some of these cranks are almost as fun as sidewalk art. I caught a TV interview that included a guy 'seeking the Republican nomination.' He was seeking it in a beaver hat, and his 'platform' was an epic poem he'd written out longhand on I forget how many sheets of legal pad paper (it was hefty looking). He claimed he'd read this poem in the Oval Office on the night of his inauguration and bring about world peace.

Gong! Next? Then again, a guy who thinks he can find the GOP nomination dressed like an illustration from a children's book about Frontier Life, he might be the least harmful alternative of all. If all countries could be run by such obvious and ineffectual lunatics, it's hard to see how they'd get something as complex as a land war in Asia going...