ABOUT THE ARTEESTE
SOME FACTS ABOUT GRADY
He has never been described as "bumptious".
His diet includes neither kibble, nor bits.
He is not frightened of slugs. Really. Not even a little bit. Totally cool. With slugs.
He gives Must Love Dogs two and a half stars.
Believes the phrase "You scared the bejesus out of me!" raises many questions. What exactly does a bejesus look like? How does it come out of someone? Do I have a bejesus? Does everyone?
Just to be clear-- slugs are cool!
He can detangle a Slinky like nobody'sfuckinbusiness!
He has, in his lifetime, let the horse out of the barn and let the cat out of the bag, but he will not let the chips fall where they may. "No way man, not on my watch."
Lately, he has been coming round on cauliflower. But he will not budge on beets. Beets are Satan's turnips.
OKAY, OKAY...
Some TRUE! FACTS ABOUT GRADY
- His name is actually Grady Kane-Horrigan. Not Gradykane.com.
- He lives in New York's Hudson Valley, in a rambling old house. How, you may ask, does this house ramble? It rambles very well.
- He has three sons, who are not fluffy, and five cats, who are.
- His wife probably deserves better...
- He talks to the vacuum robot and sometimes he wishes it would talk back.
- He strenuously avoids exercise, cleaning the muffin pan, and ever talking about or promoting himself in a serious manner.
- He's very excited as this is the long awaited debut of his website. When he says 'long awaited' that means he waited a long time to start building it.
about the content
Notes:
I'm fascinated by scale, by the seen and unseen, how minute affects maximal. In general I think it behooves our thinking, when we reset our framework, look from a different scale, stop putting everything on the level of human practicalities and mundanities. I really like the intense imagery of these pictures and the words.
This wasn't written in Bogey's voice originally, but after I added the illos featuring his face, it became his. I literally hear him in my head when I read it.
If you find this piece snide, I don't disagree. It's a pet-peeve essay dressed up and draped in purpled verbiage. I had a friend who after seeing a show of mine, told me that it was very inspiring. She meant it as a compliment, and I took it that way, but it still feels like odd thing to say; to me, it misunderstands the creative impulse.
I don't care if I'm the only person on the planet who thinks that broken palindromes are funny, this piece makes me laugh every time, right up to the endnote, which is also a failed palindrome.
I think the less said about this piece, the better.
More straight-up descriptive work. The Shawangunk Ridge runs right through the valley we live in, and I am lucky enough to spend my workday upon it. Anyone who has spent time in the nearby Catskills will recognize this environment.
This piece ends up landing nowhere, but I'm proud of the tone of pure description. I have seen several of these events, and have compressed them into one. I tried to leave out anything personal or introspective at all, just write with clarity and force of words.
I can't get enough of animals walking into bars. It's the best set-up imaginable: incongruous beast, brings with him a set of stereotypes and assumptions into an already cliched setting. The jokes are all in playing with and subverting expectations. I'm thinking I should keep going, and turn this into a novella.
