Open Posting to Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona:
Sorry to interrupt your busy schedule campaigning for Senator Kerry and all. Good luck! By the way, the other night, couldn't any of you three foresee the red power suit? Oh, never mind. We should thank you for not wearing pink. But speaking of red . . .
On November 13th, your driver will deposit you here, at the MonOrchid building. This is how it looked three months, two months, and one month ago, and that popup photo was taken today, Friday, October 15, 2004. Those big ugly red things appear to be some polymer-sealed plywood sheets, semi-peeling from the walls they are affixed to.
In the August / September issue of shade magazine, run by Ted Decker and Wayne Rainey (and some others, but they're hiding), they wrote:
Summer may traditionally be a downtime in Phoenix, but the Board of Directors of Shade Projects has spent the months busily planning Momentum, our annual fundraiser, which will take place at the MonOrchid building on November 13. After the overwhelming success [blah blah blah] . . . So far, the event will feature our governor, Janet Napolitano, presenting the annual Janet Napolitano Arts Advocacy Award to Congressman Ed Pastor. We're also planning some [blah blah blah] . . .
This year's event wil also be held in conjunction with Smithsonian Magazine's Culturefest.
That's right, Editors and Experts from that venerable, internationally-known magazine will be in town.
Our Momentum event will be the Saturday evening of the five-day festival.
Who knows, maybe they'll gussy the dump up in time. (Or, maybe they don't even think it's a dump.) After all, they themselves said the summer didn't slow them down. They have almost a month.
By way of contrast, in the same funky complex, Anthony Olivieri and his crew have painted Vine Saccento's office a clean bright yellow; and, from their main building, they tore down all the crappy antiwar posters John Leaños and his students plastered up on their walls, and began to paint. They are working at it, against the entropy and the hostile, aggressive degeneration of the neighborhood.
We're not partisans for you. (We are voting to re-elect the President.) Frankly, we don't know or care much about you. But we thought you ought to know whose lazy asses you keep coddling, and saving from the vicissitudes of survival in the real world with several millions of our dollars.
Thank you for the attention of one of your undoubtedly junior staffers.
Sincerely,
Jerome du Bois
Catherine King
The Tears of Things
PS. For background, please read "The Burgeoning," on our sidebar.
[Update: Franklin Einspruch of artblog.net reminds us that the word "monorchid" refers to a man with one testicle. In the light of this information, Governor, do you really want your picture taken with that sign dangling, so to speak, over your head?]
Posted by Jerome at October 15, 2004 10:29 PM | TrackBack