Bunny Bunns

Life as a hare in the industrialized world is a tragic cliché.  Pursued, eaten, worn, turned into lucky key chains, used as test subjects in trials for everything from cancer treatment to the effects of florescent dye in wacky glow-in-the-dark dinosaur socks... bunnies are nature's perpetual victim. What makes their demise especially brutal is that they're so inherently vulnerable-adorable.  It's like putting cuteness in a blender. 

What's the alternative, though? Should we begin dumping Johnson's Baby Shampoo into toddlers' pried-open eyes to see how long it takes for them to fall out?  Are we to grow gourd-sized tumors in kidnapped homeless people to determine whether a pill kills the disease or the whole dude?

For most of us, the reason to affect other life falls somewhere between pleasure and survival. If I can live without a thing that causes suffering, I will. On the other hand, if my well-being depends on it―if I simply must wear wacky glow-in-the-dark dinosaur socks to the paleontologists' annual Halloween party―then look out, rabbits.

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Malt Shop Dreams

Historically, we tend to think about the American twentieth century in increments of ten. Certainly by midcentury, it seems like sweeping changes in thinking and style unfolded by the decade, or we've imposed that organization after the fact.  Either way, each era had its own mindset and aesthetic, its distinct existential vibe. 

The fifties have an immediately recognizable quality: that post-World War II glow of righteousness, optimism, safety, convenience, and baby making. We had conquered evil, and it was time to cut a rug, eat burgers and fries, and procreate! 

I include myself grammatically, but I wasn't there. Instead, the essence of that period has been distilled and transmitted to me through family albums, writing, and classic entertainment like an inherited memory. Because I've seen those years through idealized TV shows, movies, and photographs, the fifties capture my imagination in a strange and specific way. There's an ironic, almost surreal contrast between the black-and-white technology still in use then and the emphatic energy I associate with that time. A colorful era on colorless media.

Imagine eating Froot Loops before the food dye has been added... That's the 1950s to me. 

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Hat Bugs

There hasn't been enough art involving predatory, entomological clothing.

Until now.

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