John Yates, �Stealworks�
About three years back, I was working at the bookstore when this totally hot fucking amazing beauty walked in asking about National Geographic magazines. Normally we don�t carry magazines, but somebody had dumped a shitload on us and the owner decided to see if there was actually a market for these things.
There wasn�t, so when she came up with both arms full of the things, I gave her a discount, which promptly made her go back and take even more of these things off our hands. She explained how she was doing clip art with the photos, utilizing a lot of collage work. She came back two or three times after that, basically clearing us out of all of our stock.
We struck up numerous conversations during these shopping excursions of hers and surprisingly, I didn�t babble like an idiot and managed to maintain eye contact, which was not easy, I can tell you. Then she came in one day and gave me a muffin, for no reason at all.
What kind of connotations can you gleam from that? What do you say? �Thank you for letting me eat your muffin�? Before I could think of a response that wouldn�t get me slapped, she brought her mother in to meet me.
This was odd, even for me and my past history of finding crazy girls to date. But before I could figure out exactly what the hell was going on, the mother, who was quite enchanted with yours truly, mentioned how proud she was of her daughter.
�Yeah, she�s something else,� I said, trying to sneak a look at her walking toward the back of the store.
�El Salvador isn�t the easiest place to do missionary work, but she�ll be amongst good people, people who need to hear the word of God.�
I practically fell over. My little muffin girl? A fucking Missionary? And what the hell is this about El Salvador? All true. And in fact, she was leaving the next morning. I was crestfallen. Whose muffin would I eat now? She gave me her e-mail address before she left. I wrote. She didn�t.
Then without warning nearly a year later, she came back into the store. She gave me a flyer for an art show, saying I might recognize the photos. I went to the gallery that night, probably the first time I went to a gallery that I didn�t need to write a paper for.
I�m not the guy to take to a gallery. If you ever saw the old Nicolas Cage movie, Vampire�s Kiss you can gauge my reaction: �What do you think?� the girl asks. Nicolas Cage looks at the painting for a moment, deep in thought and finally speaks, saying, �I got to take a piss.� He then sneaks out of the museum by way of the back door.
That�s kind of what I was thinking. 17 years of listening to punk rock songs will make you a little cynical of seeing clip art showing a bunch of cops in riot gear next to a picture of a starving child. Ooh, profound!
That�s kind of what this collection from Punk Rock Icon John Yates reads like. Yates has designed dozens of punk album covers, most notably for Alternative Tentacles. Some have been very poignant, but others seem like they should have been written in a sharpie pen on a peechee binder during homeroom.
As somebody who revels in political theater, I�d rather see this then yet-another picture of a hot girl on the cover (though I do like them hot girls...), but this, the second collection of art I�ve read by Yates, seems like he isn�t growing. In fact, the best graphic (used on the Biafra �Die for Oil, Sucker� 7�), featuring George Washington with a skull mask shaped like the United States wasn�t even his, instead being directly lifted from Time magazine.
Anyway, so I�m looking at this stuff, trying to think of something more complementary to say to her besides, �You got nice tits,� but then I see her walk around the corner, and she does have nice tits. She comes bouncing up to me and gives me a hug.
�So these are yours, huh?� I say when she lets go.
Me? No, I�m no artist, my boyfriend did all these.�
Great, so now I can�t even complement her tits.
Good muffin, though.
