Sexism v Racism

Recently I have become involved/studying more about feminism and gender equality.

For those of you who know me well you know that when I set off for college (the first time) I went to study "Creative Expression and Racial Relations/Social Justice." Really, that was the title I gave to my major (the Gallatin School at NYU let you create your own major). I have always been really interested in race relations, especially the ways which race operates in the United States. This stems, I believe, from growing up in two different countries where race is treated differently but with some similarities, as well as from growing up in predominately non-white neighborhoods but going to school in predominately white institutions. So, come my first year of school the majority of my courses pertained to studying race and racism, the African diaspora, and the legacies of racism that the institution of chattel slavery created in the United States.

This however, has been a limited scope of 'social justice.' I believe that as a male in this patriarchal society it has been easier for me to be aware of racial injustices and remain relatively ignorant to gender and sexually based injustices. Luckily I've become more aware over the last couple of years to the issues faced by women in this country, as well as those outside of heteronormative social construct. (Wow, that sounded like college talk). I've become aware of actions I'd been taking which made me not only complacent in this inequality but an actual agent of sexism and gender-bias. Luckily, like when I was first studying racism and it's proponents I have been slowly chipping away and I believe become a more active advocate of general equality.

I have to thank my sisters (congratulations on the marriage!) and my girlfriend for helping me take a more honest and revealing look at my actions and the general power structures that are in place. I appreciate having conversations around very general ideas of sexism, such as why cat-fighting is encouraged by both males and females, to more emotionally charged and personal revelations about customs of "picking up" women and things of that sort. One of the interesting and hardest parts for me to come to terms with has been the intersection of race and gender struggles. Often times these two positions are aligned in their fight for equality, yet they have often been pitted against each other and used to suppress one another. I had an interesting debate, for instance, while applying a collage to my coffee table, about whether or not it was appropriate to place an image of Huey P. Newton next to a white woman with a crown... Because both of these positions come with emotional ties and are so charged, it becomes important for each side to remove itself and be able to see the other side of the argument. I do not believe that these two positions are fundamentally opposed, but it is tricky to navigate the way that different systems of power play out in various scenarios.

Anyway, I wanted to reflect, because I heard some particularly offensive gender-based comment made by a professor today, and I think if I had heard it a few years ago I wouldn't have even noticed that it was offensive or have taken action against it. Anyway, I encourage everyone to be more aware of all types of inequality in their everyday lives. It will only lead to us all creating a more equal world, (and I hate the word 'tolerance.' Being able to 'tolerate' something means begrudgingly accepting differences. I think we should strive for something more than that).

OH! Also, don't let me come off high-and-mighty or self important. I often times throw these to the wind, make inappropriate jokes and then kick myself about it later. I believe it's important to realize there is a separation from joking to point out inequality and joking in ignorance. I also believe that the receiving audience has a lot to do with whether something is appropriate or not. Please don't go straight from this post to any of my "Today's Jokes." I don't like to be an immediate hypocrite.

Anyway,
Thanks.

Day 2

This is the president of RISD:



I love this school. At the same time, my hands feel like they are about to fall off, and I haven't had to think this hard about art in a LONG time. But that's why I love it.

My spacial dynamics class is awesome, thanks to professor Garreth from the U.K. who lectured us for 8 hours on perception phenomenon and how everything we know is wrong. Which I guess was not entirely correct because I already did know that YES, the world is not in color, just in electromagnetic fields, and yes, perception is not absolute truth. But it was still fun/interesting/exciting to have a professor demand theory be applied to our art instead of the regular craftsmanship compensating for poor ideas. (The bad part now is that we have to scrap craftsmanship and come up with original ideas, which anybody can attest is much harder than it sounds).

Met some really great people here so far, but after these first two days it is apparent why our orientation leaders kept pounding into us that we needed to remember to have a life, as I have done nothing but eat sleep and dream my assignments. Hopefully this weekend will be a bit freer and we can go out for drinks and discuss typefaces at length.

We also saw a video about color constancy that blew my mind, and although I've searched in vain I cannot find it on youtube. Look it up.

So now I have an estimated three hours of homework left, so I'm just taking this break to say hello world, what's up, I'm still alive, RISD is great, and all that shit.

Illustration Fox Pass

(faux-pas)

If you are on a plane, and Willy Wonka is chasing you out of the door, please leave your suitcase.

I thought we were supposed to take plane safety seriously. But how can I when the illustrator drew in a man in purple suit and top-hat?

Bugs I hate

Giant, terrifying, buzzing moths are no doubt the scariest bug. I see these things and freak out. One attacked me last night, and it caused me to look over my shoulder for the rest of the night. They aren't my least favorite though, that honor goes to the house centipede. I woke up with one of these crawling in my ear once, and started crying. It was horrific. I still feel disgusting thinking about it. Gahhh.You see this picture? Why do these things exist? You know, the weird thing is, I don't mind spiders. Not at all. Unless it's super poisonous, I say, "Let 'em be." But whenever I see one of these nasty son-of-a-bitches I grab a broom, shoes, baseball bat, etc., and go to town smashing them to bits. What's worse, is they live a long time. Seven years. And they have an average of 63 babies a year. Let me break that down for you. In seven year, two centipedes have 63 babies. Half of those sixty three (assuming they are split male/female) have 63 babies, along with the original pair's sixty three. That's 2,050 centipedes... in two years. In the third year there are 66,611 centipedes. In the fourth year there are 2,164,865. The fifth? 70,358,124. And the sixth? 2,286,639,049. How would you like to be seven years old and have over two billion great-great-great-great grand kids?

So, whenever you have the chance, kill them. Because for each one you kill you are keeping millions, literally MILLIONS off the globe in a minor four years.

In closing, I am scared of moths. Why are they so frightening? They're hairy insects, and they can fly. They just look freaky. But I hate centipedes. Whenever I see one, I want to puke. That is all.

I love my mom

She never ceases to amaze me with the amount of love and compassion and care she has. She is the person I most admire in the world.

Happy Mother's Day!

I really mean it.

Clapping

What the fuck.

Yesterday I had a lucid moment. I was sitting in painting, doing a group critique for finals, and after each person presented we'd break out into clapping. Mid-way through the very last applause it struck me: What the fuck am I doing? I stared down at my hands, and stopped.

"I really enjoyed the compositional elements of your painting, as well as your bold use of color. Let me show you my appreciation by beating my hands together to make noise, as this is the most appropriate gesture I can think to make."

Really, this sent me on a head trip. I know why we clap, or rather why we continue to clap and applaud: It's a social gesture. Whenever you hear clapping you think of praise. I understand this. It is similar to other social gestures, which we pick up as small children and then cease to question afterward. I get it. It's ingrained that when I like something, I should make meat-slapping noise. Ok.

But as I snapped out of it, and stared at my hands, I felt weird. Who started this trend? Why is this what we do? When I stopped clapping, I got stares from those around me.

"Look at this outcast," they thought, "Doesn't he know we need his claps?"

Today I was in Creative Writing, and, seeing as it was the last class, we all shared segments of our writing. I had forgotten about my recent aversion to clapping until it came time to clap... I felt like a liar. Now, instead of enjoying the clap, I just stare at my hands, confused...

There is one place I can understand the benefit of clapping: Music. If I need to keep a beat it is very easy to clap. It's a great snare drum replacement. Foot stop. Clap. Foot stop. Clap. Simple and effective.

So I came home, and I started doing research:
"The custom of applauding may be as old and as widespread as humanity, and the variety of its forms is limited only by the capacity for devising means of making a noise (i.e., stomping of feet or rapping of fists or hands on a table). Within each culture, however, it is usually subject to conventions."

Thanks for nothing wikipedia. Now you just confirmed that no one really knows why we clap. Well, fine. I am personally taking a no clap stance for now. Instead I plan to do the "Aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!," from mariachi songs. That's way more expressive and funny to me.

Here's some good claps:
Sarcastic clap (pretty poor quality)
The Clapper

And here's the best example of bad claps:
Cocky Clapper
The Clap

In closing: Clapping is ridiculous.

Why am I still here?

I found this about 40 minutes ago, and it caused me to stay at work for half an hour longer than I needed to.

At first, I said "This guy is a creep, and hilarious." For people who know me well, I think that this might be what I'll be like when I grow up. But, then, as I continued to watch almost ten other videos this guy made, I realized he is a genuinely funny but thoughtful character (he also played a duet with Cloris Leachman in one of his videos).

If you're into the ruminations of an old man, watch the catalog.

Everything that is connected and beautiful...

A new Silversun Pickups album comes out in two days. Although I have no money I might have to figure out how to get a copy. Their last album was a surprise hit for my 2006-2007 year, and I would recommend it highly to anyone. I was really hyped to find out about the new album. I took a lot of 3am-6am bike rides to a soundtrack of their albums Pikul and Carnavas. In fact, I will give you a brief list of what might have been a night's bike ride two years ago:

1.Rick James- Cold Blooded
2.Janis Joplin- Piece of my Heart
3.Al Green- Let's Stay Together
4.Noisettes- Sister Rosette
5.Atmosphere- Sunshine
6.Bat For Lashes- Mother Sea
7.Grizzly Bear- Knife
8.TV on The Radio- Ambulance
9.K-OS - Sunday Morning
10.Eazy-E - Ain't Said Shit
11.Prince- Kiss
12.Keak da Sneak, E-40, The Federation- Hyphy Remix

Well, that's a taste. But I remember those specifically. "H-Y-P I'm HYPHY, MAANNN." I really want to go for a bike ride now. But I need to get a new tube for my tire because I demolished it. Well, it's probably good since I need to finish my homework right now...

Also, I finally switched to Firefox, because I got a fuckin' bitch of a virus which would redirect my Google searches to a different site. It rendered my internet explorer useless.

Um... I'm going to go eat a peanut butter sandwich with a glass of milk.

And it goes a little something like this...
DMC and DJ Run,
dum diddy dum diddy dum diddy diddy dum dum...

Accessory

Channeling Prince from my earlier post, Michael Jackson from my drunk dance moves, and Stevie Wonder's head sways I've finally started work on a song that I've put off for months and months. I'm not tech-savvy enough to have figured out how to post it on here yet, but I will soon. Until then, check out what 4 hours work sounds like on The Apes Planet. The song title is "Accessory."

"You've got some beautiful wood"

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but of course I've been distracted.

In the same vein as OverheardinNY or something similar, I have heard ridiculous things on the bus going to work and school over the past week. Here are a few examples:

Guy in funny hat to guy next to me: "You've got some beautiful wood." (This morning, the man sitting next to me was carrying planks of wood).


Old man to young man: "You don't know a muthafucking thing about the Native Americans"
Young man #1: "I'm doing my graduate thesis on displaced people and chemistry..."
Old woman, interjecting: "It's what they say, you can't trust everything you read."
Old man: "That's right. You white people killed ous brothers. YOU (directed at young man) killed MY ancestors!"
Old woman: "Mmmm hmmm. And I got it the worst of all. I'm black and native. You ever see that one movie, you know, about prohibition."
Young man #1: "Um... no, what."
Old woman: "You know, that guy... Sir... Sir.... Sir something. And that water world guy?"
Young man #1: "I'm not very good at remembering. I'm trying to quit smoking."
Old woman: "My son is 37 years old, and he never smoked in his life. If you had good parents you wouldn't be smoking."
Young man #1: "No, my parents smoked. I'm actually a recovering alcoholic."
Old woman: "You real mixed up in bad things. SEAN CONNERY! That's it, Sir Sean Connery."
Old man: "James Bond!"
Old woman: "You remember now? It's coming back to you now?"
Young man #1: "I don't think I've seen this movie."
Old woman: "You've seen it. Waterworld, who's that guy."
Young man #2, from back of the bus: "Kevin Bacon."
Young man #1: "No, Kevin Costner."
Old Woman: "Yeah, Kevin Costner. You remember now."
Young man #1: "No, you know. My memory is bad. You're also talking to a guy who had chemotherapy."
Old man: "Shut the fuck up."
Young woman, who has been rolling her eyes for fifteen minutes: "Will you all SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
At this point I got off the bus, but not before I heard a half bus shouting match that circled back to Native American history, with someone saying the word "Injuns."

Anyway, thought I'd share.

Good Night

Sleep Tight

Kanye vs Warhol

In my mind I am formulating an essay describing Kanye West and Andy Warhol in like terms. I will probably receive backlash from fans of Warhol and fans of Kanye. It was sparked by the end of this interview with Kanye for his COMPLEX photo shoot.



The comparison resides in the space of celebrity persona. Andy Warhol was not Warhol because of his work. He was Warhol because of his identity, his never ending performance. The work of art was not the silk screens, the soup cans or the films. The work of art was the artist. It was the persona that Warhol maintained, the good and the bad.

Kanye West, like Warhol, makes art (music) and like Warhol is venturing and evolving into different avenues with his artwork. But it seems to me Kanye's goal isn't his next album, it's him. He is trying to become (and I might argue, succeeded) in becoming his own greatest work. Kanye West is not KANYE WEST on the caliber of his music alone, but rather his interpretation of himself.

However, Kanye and Warhol differ greatly in the persona's they achieved. While both share the captive audience of popular culture, they acknowledge their roles quite differently. Warhol down played everything he did, which I believe was his genius. If someone accused him of ruining fine art he might smile and agree. He was notorious at not being able to be nailed down. He acted as a vessel, where he said "I am what you want me to be," and was unapologetic. This frustrated his critics and awed his admirers.


Kanye, on the other hand, is hyper-aware of his status, and extremely responsive to his perceived importance in the main stream. He is NOT what you want him to be, which is a grateful, submissive and thankful celebrity. He is a mega-star who believes (or would lead us to believe that he believes) that he is superior. And therefore his critics hate him for it, and he leaves his admirer's in awe. But I think he is savvy like Warhol. He's figured out that his hard work and his creative output are less important than his attitude about them.

Anyway, this is something I might explore further, type up, and submit to music and culture magazines in order to pay for a month's supply of Taco Bell.

Also, I'd like to note that I'm not making value judgements about either artist's talent, but just about their ingenuity in the realm of celebrity status.

Naked Teenagers

I was reading just now (not the homework which I started to read and then stopped reading) about how to increase blog traffic. The easiest way is to be popular, or be Kanye West, who apparently has one of the most visited blogs (although I have to say he does deliver weird videos almost as much as I do).

The second sneaky way is to talk about current events, or be in the know about something. I cannot do either since my television doesn't work and I am only in the know about what I did today.

The best advice, however, is to be sneaky, and title your post "Naked Teenagers," which is a funny idea. It apparently acts as bait for every person who enters that into a search engine. The best part about this though is that I work in Teen Programs at the Walker Art Center, and I am often responsible for coming up with new content for their website.

The Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council is responsible for curating and organizing events for teens and young adults to connect them to contemporary art. One of these said events is called "Hot Art Injection," a childish play on words (hot beef injections). Well, when I looked at our Google analytics at the WACTAC it turns out most people visited that site after searching for "hot & teens." Welcome to the internet.

Hump Day

Yoskis. Yoskis. Yoskis.

Last night I stayed awake so I could record melodic songs ala Prince, and then my computer crashed. So I went to sleep at four with nothing to show for it.

Wednesday is a long day for me, with class from 9:00am to 9:00pm. Tomorrow is a long day, yesterday was a long day, Friday is a long day. I'm looking forward to Saturday, which is "hang-out-in-my-underwear-eating-mayo-on-various-sandwichesque-foods-on-the-couch-while-watching-zombie-movies-day."

Thought I'd let you know...

But really, be on the look out for the Crooks Club. Sometime. In the next decade.

New Layout

I've finally decided to stop being lazy and brush up on the most basic HTML skills that I have hidden deep in my brain, plus do a little logo design and layout shit. So, here's my new blog layout, and as time passes I plan on making it nicer and more visual pleasing.

I had a great break, got to visit both Pratt and RISD, and to be honest I am really hoping for RISD over Pratt. The school is banging. Banging. If I don't get in I will probably turn off all the lights in my basement and sit in the dark listening to sad music... naked. Crying in the dark. Or maybe dancing... in the dark.

Tomorrow I have my marathon session of classes, with three hours of sculpture, three hours of painting and three hours of art history. I am kind of excited for everything but painting, because we are just replicating the works of an old master. I was assigned Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. This is the painting I will be replicating:


It reminds me of Fantasia, and it is based off of the Greek god Silenus, who was the god of drunkeness and wine. I remember being really amazed by the animations of flowing wine in Fantasia.


When I was four years old I tried to convince my little brother that the volcanic eruptions that formed the beginning of the world in the first segment of Fantasia was actually orange juice. He was barely a year old so I doubt he even knew what I was talking about.

Anyway, I am a little apprehensive because I have to do this painting in oil, and I have never worked in this medium before. So... hopefully I figure it out in time, or at least enough time to get a decent grade.

Anyway, please let me know what you think of the new layout.

ZOMBIES ATTACK

My last 3 Netflix rentals have been zombie movies, which are fucking awesome. Here's what I've watched so far:

I Drink Your Blood


Evil Dead


Night of the Living Dead


These are what I have coming up:
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
Army of Darkness
Dead Alive
Zombie
Return of the Living Dead
Return of the Living Dead 2
Land of the Dead
Fido
White Zombie

Zombie movies are fantastic, because it is a movie you can live vicariously through, like any horror film, where you can say "Don't go in there!" or "Oh shit, he's going to die." or "Stop reading the book of shadows asshole!" It makes us believe that we are going to be much better equipped for the Zombie holocust. My first foray into the Zombie genre, as I believe is true of many of my peers, was through the movie "28 Days Later." This is one of my favorite movies of all time. (To be fair since the infected aren't the undead they aren't really zombies, but it's the same concept).



Danny Boyle is a great fucking director. I still haven't seen Slum Dog Millionaire which should probably replace those next Zombie movies at the top of my queue. But I diverge. Zombie movie are fucking awesome.

One of the greatest parts of zombie movies is coming up with a creative reason to why zombies are alive and how they create more zombies. Until the recent creation of the "infecting" zombie created by movies such as 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, most zombies were brought to life by magic, pure evil, the devil or some sort of space based entity (aliens, radiation, etc).

I Drink Your Blood had the interesting idea of creating zombies by those infected with rabies. Not only were the zombies rabid, but they also belonged to a satanic cult. Double-whammy. This provides a the convieniance of solving both of the fundamental zombie problems: Rabies cause the madness, and rabies is spread through bites, etc.

Night of the Living Dead's zombies are true zombies, who are reanimated through extreme radiation that was caused by a probe sent to venus by NASA. This probe cause those who had recently died (and therefore not decomposed) to seek out human flesh. This is a good solution, because once the zombies have killed and eaten part of a human they too are reanimated and prepared to eat other humans (this also allows for a ghoulish look as most of the zombies have flesh wounds).

The most disappointing reanimation technique for me is magic. It is the least believable and therefore the least scary. I'm never going to worry about the evil woods attacking my friends and turning us into zombies (a la Evil Dead). However, RAGE virus, shit, that's just mutated rabies as far as I'm concerned. Plus those guys aren't sluggish zombies, they're faster than lightning. Apparently if you're a zombie you also become a world class track athlete.

Anyway, I know this post is probably super boring to anyone who isn't obsessed with zombies (and I only know about two people that might be), so I'll leave you with sage advice:

1. Once your loved ones are bitten, kill them. Don't wait to see if they might have immunity to zombie bites. They don't. Bludgeon them in the head, or shoot them in the head.

2. Kill any zombie you see when not being chased. You might say "Oh, he can't see me, I don't want to go out of my way to kill him." But he will bite two, then they both will bite two, then all those will bite two. Now you're dealing with fifteen zombies. See what I mean?

3. Don't read the book of the dead. Really, leave it alone. If you're a book worm just bring Huckleberry Finn to the cabin out in the woods.

4. Don't listen to the radio. One second it will tell you to stay indoors. Then, after you boarded up the house and are surrounded by zombies it will say "Oops, sorry, go to these shelters." Once you've fought through a hoard of zombies, lost half of your team and reached the shelter, it will turn out they were overrun weeks ago. So don't do it.

If anyone feels like watching zombie movies with me (I'm completely serious here) let me know. I am going to be gone for a week but when I return it'll be zombie time, all the time.

MIDTERMS ARE EATING ALL OF MY TIME

Pretty soon I'm going to go crazy and start wandering outside in my bathrobe, mumbling to myself...

That's not true. I don't own a bathrobe.

Here's some stuff:

This is from when I cleaned my apartment thoroughly in February. I said, "Hey, I wonder if I could move the stove and clean under there." Unfortunately I could. Although I did save $35 dollars on my 1991 Playboy subscription.

Seeing as I finished my application to RISD a month ago I put it out of my mind, only to remember that I still needed to send in my drawing samples. So for the past three days I've been summoning all of my pencil skills, and consequently I've been doing really poorly on my midterm projects. Oh well. Here are some snowflakes, for a drawing that has the instructions "Alter a piece of paper, then draw that." All of these drawings are 16" x 20".

Here's the details, but I think you can click on the pictures and they get bigger. I'm not sure.
Oh, this was my second sculpture for sculpture class. It's a coffin and a frog. It was a "Found wooden object/play on words" assignment. I found the frog... in my room. Painted him. Made a coffin out of masonite, veneered it with cedar, and lined it with velvet. I even constructed velvet cushions which line the inside (you can't really see them here).

Here's the infamous RISD bike drawing. This was a bitch and caused me to go temporarily blind, since I was drawing it in low light from the bike in my kitchen. I like it a lot, and compared to the last bike I drew it is much better. I decided to make it look like a manual showing how to put it together.

Here's a detail of the pedals and front gear shifter.

Here's a detail of the back gear shifter.

Ok, I've got to go now. I should really be drawing and/or studying. Or napping. But definitely not on the internet.

Me and my arrow, taking the high road.

I think this is why I always wanted a dog as a little boy. You might remember I posted about my VHS collection of 80's classics earlier, and I mentioned "The Point." Well, this was my favorite song. I've remembered it to this day:



Here's some more stuff I have on VHS that's also on Youtube:



Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view...



I also remember the commercials really vividly:



Ok, I think it might be time for me to take a blogging break now that I just spent fifteen minutes watching Youtube commercials from the 80's.

Blog fever

Meg says I have to post 10 blogs in order to solicit one from her, but I might just force her to put one out tomorrow at this rate:

Shout out to Jessica for posting Biz Markie on the on your status and reminding me of these gems:



Who got the better sample? Both come from Freddie Scott's "You got what I need" (above).

Biz Markie aka The Biz
"Just a Friend"



Ghostface Killah aka Ghostface aka Pretty Tony aka Tony Starks aka Ironman
"Save Me Dear"



I always love Ghostface's production standards, with Kanye mentor No I.D. on a lot of the Pretty Tony album, as well as Ghostface producing his own tracks (including 'Save Me Dear'). Soul is the way to go. But this one is hard to call, because Biz Markie's is obviously the classic, but then again he didn't do very much creatively with the sample, just looping the first bars and essentially stealing the chorus from Mr. Scott. However, Ghostface fell into a pitfall of oversampling the singing on the original, making the song sound garbled and unfocussed at times. I'm still going to go with G.F.K. on this one though, because his use of the sample is much more creative an involved.

Ghostface is a hell of a performer. I saw him three years ago in New York at a secret show after Animal collective. Animal Collective was really dissapointing live show because they just stood in front of their instruments hitting knobs and shit, and the one guy in front of the turntable had a gimmicky headlamp on, which just was annoying to watch as he moved his head from side to side. It is funny that Ghostface Killah was hired for the secret show at NYU. I actually got the last ticket, which I got after a friend of mine found out who was playing the secret show and called me 7 times in a row until I picked up, and just yelled "It's Ghostface! It's fucking Ghostface," at which point I ran to the box office. Anyway, I think me and about 10 other people knew his songs, which sucks because I think most of the people left after Animal Collective.

I'm now going to give up three songs which I've held in my sampling vault. I know they might not seem impressive at first, but I think these three songs have gold stuck in them:

Mamas & Papas
I Saw Her Again


Fiona Apple
Not About Love (unreleased)


Breakwater
Say You Love Me Girl


I know, too hot right? Well, I'll break you off with a bonus then:

Shirley Bassey
I Who Have Nothing


I actually spent a week making a beast out of "I Who Have Nothing" when I lived out east. I think I drove Mike, Tito, Meg & Constable Phillip crazy. Brennan was already crazy, so no big deal. But it was glorious, and then the Sony Acid trial period was over before I got to save it as a WAV. file. I yelled, I cried. I didn't really cry, but I kicked my desk.

Anyway, yeah. That's me thinking about music.

Circus Pizza

I was thinking about Circus Pizza, especially after that last post where I mentioned going there (West St. Paul). When I was about seven my dad came up from Mexico and was staying at the Days Inn in downtown St. Paul which is now the Holiday Inn. It was near my birthday so one day he picked me up from school and we took the bus down Robert Street. I remember being worried that since my dad didn't live in Minnesota we would get lost and that I wouldn't make it home. I didn't know where we were going, and was definitely thrilled when we arrived at Circus Pizza.

Circus Pizza was the Chuck E. Cheese of Minnesota until they were bought out by Chuck E. Cheese in 1999. It was better though, because they had the animatronic band "The Rock-A-Fire Explosion," which is now super hyped because of the emergence of the new Youtube videos featuring reprogrammed Rock-A-Fire groups playing hits like Usher's "Love in this Club." I actually read an article about the guy reprogramming these in SPIN a few months ago, but completely forgot about it until I was searching for Circus Pizza images (which I could not find, unfortunately). Here's my favorite one, with the band playing MGMT's 'Electric Feel." The gorilla rocks so hard.



On birthdays it was the best because you got a birthday package, which included pizza and tokens for your whole party for about $50 bucks (this is a guess). I have a great picture of me Shannon Joyce wearing birthday hats from my 6th birthday, which I will have to find in my mom's boxes of pictures the next time I go over there. The Rock-A-Fire Explosion is behind us, covered in spit balls, which was always a part of the tradition. Another great experience on your birthday was the money-cage, where you would get trapped in a booth with blowing Circus Pizza money and you'd have 30 seconds to grab as much as you could. In the end you would get that number of tickets, and inevitably spend those tickets redeeming crappy prizes that would break before you got home, or super balls.

But my favorite thing to do at Circus Pizza was to play (and hopefully beat) the Simpsons Arcade game. I felt like I was getting over because my mom wouldn't let me watch the Simpsons when I was little so I got to indulge with the game. The only time I beat it in fact was that winter day in 1994 with my dad. It was my greatest achievement up to that moment.



I am kind of glad they tore down Circus Pizza, because I think I would be sorely disappointed to go back now and see torn vinyl chairs, a semi-functioning animatronic band, and eat burnt thin crust pizza in a poorly lit room. The magic would be gone, and that is something I never want to lose.