New American Weird

Lesley Graves & Allison Jones @ Doug Fir

Before you ridicule my garish use of photoshop, I would like to ask:  Have you seen the art that's come out of Baltimore recently?  It's like a computer ate LSD and skittles and then puked.  It's pretty, but also tawdry & hyperactive.  So this is my little tribute to Baltimore's New Weird America; I have fed my computer acid skittles and turned a poorly shot photo into a pukey tribute to Wham City!

This is also a warning for Lesley and Allison to watch out for Baltimore artists.  Word is, these New Weird Americans rifle through thrift stores searching for bric-a-brac to turn into new weird statements on America.  Years ago, Lesley was featured in the critically acclaimed textbook We the People (only a few pages separate from Ronald Reagan!) and some day, that childhood picture of her sliding gleefully (and patriotically) down a slide may appear at Nudashank with polychromatic laser-beams shooting out of her eyes.  When she was a wee tyke, Allison cameoed in a Japanese baby food commercial.  The brand must be kept secret, lest Jimmy Joe Roche discovers it and edits the stock footage into some bizarre amalgam that also features clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger, animated kittens, Rorschach blots, and a mildly disingenuous psyched-out UFO preacher.  

My point is don't do anything EVER if you don't want Baltimore to make weird out of you.  Because it will... maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday... some future-hipster will be sifting through the City of Trash and come across your self-produced LP, "Raised on a Dream", and use it in a very weird sound collage.  It is only a matter of time, gentle friend.  We will all be weird soon enough.