Skull & Bones eat your heart out!

I had a few beers during my layover in Philadelphia. After my intense one-man drinking show, I went to do what every visitor in Philly does – get a Philly cheesesteak.

Somehow, at the last minute, I talked myself out of it and opted for the $9 turkey bacon sandwich. I always do that; change my mind at the last minute, usually for the worst. You’d think I would have learned better by now.

The lady behind me was definitely schooled in decision-making and stuck to her guns, confidently ordering the cheesesteak. She looked like one of those power speakers you see at hotel conventions.

Taking my place in front of the assembly line cooking station I awaited my sandwich that was pulled from the fridge, pre-made, and popped into the microwave. I ended up with a soggy luke-warm sandwich-unit that resembled something you might get from a vending machine, and power speaker got her gorgeous cheese steak. I went to see if they would do a trade-in but had no luck.

I found my way back to the gate where many a bearded fellow eagerly awaited his return to Yale. I tried to eaves drop on their conversations, but all I heard was a bunch of name dropping – Dr. so-and-so met me at the conference in Chicago and we met up with Dr. Whatchamacallit and then Dr. blah-blah showed up with the prestigious Dr. Wadda-Wadda…

I abandoned the scene and my baggage for a cigarette with one of the maintenance workers. I ended up giving him my sandwich.

We finally boarded – I was on my way to speak at Yale. I was very excited! After listening to the exit-row-seatbelt-floatation-cushion speech, I made myself a little nest using those weird airline pillows and short blankets. My comfort quickly dissolved when the bi-plane started up. The propeller was right out my window, right in line with me.

My buzz wore off as I watched the propeller reach its full speed. I was in direct fire if that thing decided to come loose. What if it came loose? It’d cut right through the plane and saw my legs clean off at the knee, unless of course it ricocheted into the person behind me.

The guy on the other side didn’t seem to be at all worried – lucky bastard.

Hedging my fatal future, I tucked my legs up on the empty seat next to me and kept a watchful eye on it. I wonder if that has that ever happened before?

In hindsight, if that propeller came loose and did cut my legs off that would probably be the least of my worries.

I went to the bathroom and threw-up from making myself so damn paranoid.

I hate flying.

Being greeeted by a gigantic lipstick atop a tank is a pretty strange entrance. Thanks Claes and keep it up. Maybe you can put a huge clothespin in the middle of a city or something.

Huntington Beach Art Center 041005

I was invited to host a dinner at the Huntington Beach Art Center. We had 16 people at dinner and instead of doing a round table where everyone talks a bit about themselves, I decided to follow a looser format and challenged our minds with the exquisite corpse. Basically everyone wrote three lines for our collective story, then they folded the paper so only the last line was visible and passed to the next guest. Then they wrote three lines and so on. Below is our magnificant story:

I met Mark at a Madonna concert in Vegas via Craiglist. He broke my leg ice skating and spit in my hair. Marc ate potato chips in the emergency room. He stole a magazine from the lobby. Afterwards, feeling guilty he mailed in the subscription card with a check.

The check bounced.

So he wanted to return the magazine, but he’d lost it at a state skeet shooting championship. He was a very good shot and quite proud of it. Ever since he was young his father had been teaching him the pride in precision of his work. That’s what hurt him the most – the carelessness of misplacing something – especially something he had borrowed.

It reminded him of that time he got bit by the peppered walrus. He was in between genders at the time but referred to herself at “Potpourri.” Back then Potpourri never would have borrowed anything; she much preferred thieving.

She enjoyed the thrill of stealing. Unfortunately, she got caught one too many times. Now she borrows things when she can and only steals when she has to. But when she left Tucson, she left more behind than the little dog. The DNA left in her hairbrush was the only thing the sheriff needed to follow her to Kansas. Her mother warned her about policemen, but she had a taste for the wild side.

She slowly pulled away from the curb and she thought the policemen weren’t looking she floored it. She thought for a moment they didn’t notice but when she looked in her mirror all three police cars were gaining on her fast. Immediately, she regretted her decision, but then thought maybe she would play a game with them.

She let them choose the game and they chose Red Rover. While playing the smallest child got hurt very badly and they rushed her to the hospital. At the hospital they ran several tests.

Several days later, the test results came back…except one.

Relieved that he had neither Syph nor Ebola, he did suffer the agonies of the damned for three days until the last result came in…

Yes, he will never date and drop a voodoo princess after promising to marry her. That Voodoo Queen did have him convinced his “little friend” would turn green and fall off.

However, the fears and three days of hell were soon forgotten and he continued down his previous path of immortality.

He immediately drank diet vanilla coke, wore white pants, and after Labor Day voted for Kerry.

I give to you this ring. Forever you and I will walk the earth together. Quickly, let’s head back home, it’s going to rain.

So then we leaned the ladder up against the mouth. We climbed in as the sweat and spit swallowed us down.

After the dinner, I grabbed a beer with Aaron and Eva who run an art collective called “Center for Tactical Magic.” Kate, who runs a youth hostel in Ocean Beach, San Diego, came along as well. It was a loud bar full of punk rockers and late night drunks. We set down at a table near the window. A few minutes later in came a heavy set bearded fella carrying a styrofoam airplane and a remote controlled battery powered model helicopter. He sat down with us.

Apparently he knew Aaron and Eva and gave them the airplane. After playing with it for a while, disturbing all the punk rockers, Aaron decides that he can levitate the plane. Sure enough. There he is on the right with Eva. That certainly topped the days events.

After we left the bar and went our seperate ways, I found a cozy parking space for the RV in Loyola Marymount parking lot. Here is a shot of the RV the next morning. It was strange waking up in a blacktop lot with student and professors walking by your RV trying not to look in at you. Ah, the life of a Rubber Tramper.

Can you find the RV?

This morning I awoke to a phone call from Henry Kasperowicz’s son. A few quick moments on google and I found out that our good friend Henry invented the color television! Then a call from a horse auctioneer in Ohio…then a food critic/ microbiologist… then a consruction worker from the deeep South… All responding to today’s USA Today article! Click here to read the article!

Little did I know my whole life would change with just a few strokes of a dry erase marker at a catalogue photoshoot. “Dinner w/ Marc” followed by “510-872-7326” was all it took.

Mal Sharpe everyone! The creator of the street-based put on.

more to come…

50,000 people have moved out of Detroit in the last three years. They tell me Detroit is the first American city to fall from the graces of capitalism. The motor city took a road trip south and left a legacy of abandoned buildings and empty parking lots in the blue exhaust trail.

I went into a Chinese restaurant called Chop Suey’s. You open door, and all there is, is a poster of the Great Wall of China. No chairs, no tables, just a little bullet proof window at the far end of the room. I walked all the way across the floor, where a dining room should be, and noticed another poster of strawberries. I got to the window and a woman was waiting for me, ready to take my order. But I decided not to eat there.

Is it ironic so many people live in their cars in Detroit? Probably not to the guy who lost his job at the GM plant. It was to me. The snow built up on roofs of old Cutlass’s, forty Christmas trees that didn’t sell on an empty lot three months later, still green against the new snow. I passed by homes that had been half knocked down and the bricks were strewn across the yard, but the front door was bolted shut. The shear number of empty warehouses and factories gave the place a post-Apocalyptic feel. People everywhere were pitching ideas on how to make money, either by me giving it to them outright, or them selling me can openers or repairing rust on my rental car. There is no money in Detroit.

The commander of police told me Detroit has the flu. “If Detroit falls, Michigan falls. If Michigan falls, America falls.” It felt like Detroit had more than the flu. It was in the final stages of auto-immune deficiency. Emphasis on auto. Is this the fate that awaits us, as our job market is outsourced and companies absolved from all responsibility? Will bulletproof glass be coming to the confession booth at your local Catholic church, too? Everything in Detroit is separated with bulletproof glass.
What this place needs is a sense of community.

One of the most thriving businesses was the 24-hour emergency boarding service. When someone throws a brick through your storefront plate glass window and you want to prevent everything from being looted, you give these folks a call and they come right on over and nail up some plywood.

“One man’s backyard is another man’s crime scene”, a guy told me in a bar, just after the Fire Chief bought the house a round. I fell in love with Detroit. The people who have stayed are strong, they believe in the future against all good evidence. It is possibly a city of dreamers, although often it feels like there is no hope for it.

I called a food critic who writes for the Detroit free press to attend the dinner, which was held at the Detroit artist s market gallery 4719 Woodward Avenue at East Forrest. I contacted channel 8 news to send out invitations for dinner on Saturday night. 23 chairs were set up and I had 450 requests. I honed it down to people who I felt represented Detroit, from what I’d seen over the last week and half I’d spent there.

I invited a police officer to hear how he felt, the GM executive was there, and a steel worker who was raising two daughters on his own. An 82-year-old African American woman arrived and talked to me about never wanting to leave Detroit, even if it burned to the ground. Which it is, slowly.

There is a thing called “dark tourism” in Detroit. People come from all over to watch the citizens burn their houses down the night before Halloween. It is a recent tradition, one that involves setting traps to keep firefighters from preventing a total loss. The point is to collect on insurance claims, and with everyone doing it on a special night, blame can be shifted to wild unsavory types running loose in the streets. (Apparently abandoned buildings were originally set on fire around this time by fledgling arsonists.)

People really wanted to talk about this city. That was the focus of the conversation for a while. Of course, we started off by having everyone go around the table and tell us about themselves, what they’re doing in Detroit and so on. Here’s a brief rundown of the diners:

Rabbi Mordehi Waldman and Jan Hosford-Heist, both of Oak Park

Catholic priest and counselor Lawrence Ventline of Sterling Heights

Former exotic dancer Cherry Sunday of Southgate

Professional crafter and teacher Olga Hodge, 82, of Detroit

Detroit Diesel machinist Dale Woolford, 44, and his daughters Morgan, 12, and Stephanie, 16, of Pinckney

GM retiree and historic building restorer John Lauve, 63, and his companion, Linda Croft, 61, an apartment manager, both of Holly

Johnie Bailey, 29, of Detroit, a premed student and Chrysler employee

Wine merchant Elie Boudt, 43, of Birmingham, who provided wine for the dinner

Phyllis Gantman, 53, of Farmington Hills, who worked for Metropolitan Life insurance company for 29 years until losing her job in a massive cutback in December

Ashley Woods, 20, of Orchard Lake, a student at Miami of Ohio University

Wendy Eason, 27, of Ypsilanti, who works in public relations for Caribou Coffee and is a campus minister at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church at the University of Michigan

Gregory Fell, 40, who travels around the world for Ford Motor Co. in various capacities

Country music recording artist and financial adviser Joseph James Giordano, 51, of Rochester

Detroit Police Inspector Billy McFarley, 55, commander of the 13th Police Precinct, with headquarters next door to the art gallery

Artist Mitch Cope, curator of the MORE art exhibit at the Detroit Artists Market and his parents, Hettie and Jim Cope, both 60, of Milford

Aaron Timlin, 34, of Detroit, executive director of the Detroit Artists Market

Gallery manager Christine Stamas of Detroit

It was great to have the priest, the rabbi and the former stripper all sitting next to each other. As Cherry Sunday told us her story, she handed the priest photo’s from her heyday. He was a sport and held them up for all to see as she talked.

The rabbi was a bit disappointed to find out my mother wasn’t Jewish. Which means I’m not Jewish, in the orthodox sense. “I’m part of the Tribe of God!” I screamed And then my head spun around 360 degrees, while I projectile vomited…bad joke.

I did honestly cry at one point during dinner. The stories were so powerful. The rabbi suffered through lymphoma, which brought up memories of mine. When I was a child, my bone marrow stopped producing white blood cells, and they considered me dead. Later, when I was 22, a doctor, investigating a lump under my armpit, told me I had either, leukemia, lymphoma, or AIDS. I freaked out and hit the road for three months, skipping the scheduled surgery, and just thought about life and the end of it coming my way. I got back into town; they removed a lymph node, and said I was fine.

To be in Detroit, seeing my achievement, how I was able to bring people together who would never meet, I felt overwhelmed. This was a moment when all the hard work came into focus, and I saw the result, and it felt important. In a town that needs community desperately, one was being started.

Angel Foods catered the event, free of charge. They were into the project, and excited to see what was going to happen. We ate a salad of mixed greens with cranberries and candied nuts, pecan encrusted chicken, roasted vegetables and crème Brule.

Ann Arbor, MI

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention. May I have your attention, please.

Thank you.

As you know, a lot of great things are coming out of Detroit. The White Stripes, Canadian weather, and thank god on March 20th, I’ll be coming back out of there as well. In the meantime, I will be a featured artist at a show put on by Detroit Artists Market entitled, “M.O.R.E.” (manufacturers of real excellence). This show aims to compare how artists use media with how corporations use media.

I plan to put on my best suit and go to corporations and explain to them why art is important. I’ll cold call offices, walk in and ask to set up appointments with someone in marketing. Should I get drunk first? Or stay sober, but cut off my ear at some point? The art community has some exciting things to offer a business. I’m not sure if those are two of them. But for a hundred thousand or so, I will be able to come up with some important outside perspectives, I’m sure.

Please forgive the break in continuity from the National Dinner Tour, but this is a big opportunity to preach the gospel of art to a group of business school sinners.

Thank you for you attention. Please enjoy your evening.