sometimes you feel like a nut...

Today's pop cultural reference is the theme song from the ads for Peter Paul Almond Joy and Mounds candybar. Which goes, as you may remember, "Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't."

This, from twenty-nine years ago:



The point of the story is that I spent part of the weekend sitting in my studio talking to people who wandered in. They were participating in A.G.A.S.T. (Annual Gowanus Artist's Studio Tour). Chuck came by. I took him down the hall and tried to sell him a photograph.

Anyway, as is always the case, you get your share of bizarre characters. And there's something about my particular brand of painting/public history taking (if that's what I do) that brings them out of the woodwork.

And let me tell you, dear reader, you can tell the nut-jobs a mile away.

So a woman walks in. Starts talking politics. Five minutes in we're talking about death panels.

"Do you know what people don't know?" she asks me.
"No, what?"
Already my eyes are so glazed over I might just as well have cataracts.
"The death panels aren't mentioned in the health-care reform bills."
"Okay..."
Sotto voce: "They're in the bail out bills!"

Okay, lady. Move along. As if I didn't have enough shit going on in my life that I have to listen to your crap.

I should have said that to her face, but I'm too polite.