But it didn't go away. And the next thing I knew, I'd been out of college for several years, fucking around quite un-officially, and what did I have? What was I doing? What could people call me?

Answer: who cares.

You are who you are. And the way I figure it, the only time you are what you do is when you love what you do. It's when you like your work so much you stop looking at your watch to find out when you can get the fuck outa there and go have a beer.

For me, then, this meant I was a writer. No matter how little money I made at it or how prestigious or obscure my press, I was a writer. And then something else that neither me nor my high school career counselor ever could have guessed: I was a car artist.

Not a body man. No Emilio Estevez repo man. An artist whose canvas is his car. A nut with a bunch of mis-mixed house paint, yard sale toys and a glue gun. Oh, and a show-off. Yea. There's the huckster we were trying to lose.

For who but a show-off would do to their car what I did to mine?

I just got back a little while ago from trying to talk a 91-year-old farmer out of a truly awesome set of moose antlers for my car, a "rack" as it were. It was a no go. I saw the antlers nearly a year ago when my girlfriend and I were looking for someplace to live. While checking out this little rental on the old man's property, I'd walked past his open barn and gone slack-jawed at the sight of them hanging on the wall. I'd been wanting them ever since, and by the way things went today, I can see I should have started working on him a few months ago.

Selfish considerations aside, I truly believe I would be honoring both that moose and old Mr. Hound (that's his real name) by mounting the antlers on my car. Honoring them and granting the antlers a place in preserved history, as it is my firm conviction that my car will someday come to rest in a museum. Here my imagination whispers, "Smithsonian."

Back to the huckster thing, well, it would seem I'm not a very good huckster having come away today empty handed. No matter. My car is adequately monstrous and breath-takingly chaotic as it is. It doesn't NEED a fifty pound set of moose antlers. It just would have been nice.

Okay. So I'm scrubbing toilets today to earn a little extra cash for the road. Today, tomorrow, until Friday. Then Saturday, whoosh. I'm gone. Hopefully.

It's a little tough scrubbing toilets and reminding yourself that you're doing it for a good cause when in fact you know, as I do, that one month ago you were getting paid $300 a day to run around and gather quotes that would wind up on the front page of the fifth largest newspaper in the country. That's the journalism thing I was talking about. That's the part of me that did get official, I guess. The part that's glad I got the degree. That was reporting for the New York Daily News in the wake of the Springfield, Oregon high school shootings. Big news. Big money. And I spent it all quickly in a big way. Gonzo.

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by Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
Art Cars in Cyberspace ©2004 Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
Contact us at artcars@artcars.com

Last update April 1, 2004