Jun 14th, 2002
Anatomy of Annoyance
I’m not prone to complaining, but pretentious artists who take themselves too seriously really annoy me. You know who I’m talking about: the kind of people who would glare at you if you made a joke about doodoo or said that you thought a girl was “hot.” The kind of people who are suffering because no one can understand how great they are except for them. I think I first became aware of this pet peeve when a close friend was telling me about this artist she knew named “Romeo.” When I asked what his last name was, she informed me that “Romeo doesn’t have a last name, he is an artist,” to which I responded: “Really? I hope he concurrently gets scabies and the gout.” Anyway, I was perusing Karl’s guestbook one day, when I happened upon an entry from some random stranger:
Name: nicole Sent: 13.24 - 7/6 i was going to commend you on the clever ant/soap suds anecdote you left in my guestbook but after scanning your guestbook, it seems that i was not the only one graced with that comment. oh well. you have a fun/entertaining site here. & that storefront pony-riding photo is priceless ;P Doing a little detective work, I realized that Karl had been running a spamming campaign to try and rouse publicity for his site. He had been posting his silly little comment on several website guestbooks, including this girl’s website.
Here is the excerpt: i just finished college. i want to travel ‘into’ instead of around. sometimes i think the best kind of travel would be if i were an ant surfing the car wash suds in my own front yard gutter. I knew as a fact that this did not make any sense because not only do I know Karl very well but the damn thing just doesn’t make any sense. So in response, I typed in her guestbook: By the way, that guy Karl copies all his stuff from me. Out of boredom, I perused her site and found it to be quite nicely put together. Two things stuck out in particular: the fact that the site was named Memento Mori, the same name as the short story upon which the film “Memento” was based, and that she had a section of self-portraits, the same kind of self-portraits that I was mercilessly badgered about not too long ago - well, maybe they weren’t quite as narcissist as mine, but they were self-portraits nonetheless. The only thing was that the way that she shot her self-portraits, it was really difficult to actually see what she looked like - they would be of only her leg, or her hip, or her face in a blurred mirror. I concluded that either she was drunk when she took the self-portraits or it was too difficult for her to hold the camera and take the picture of herself while posing at the same time.
I decided to write another entry in her guestbook: Oh yeah, did you copy the title from that short story that Memento was based on? Yeah. . . one more thing - those self-portraits are tough to see. Can you put a self-portrait up that really is normal. Well, not necessarily normal, but I mean, I can’t really see you that well in these pictures. Also, was it difficult to twist your wrist in those weird angles to take those self-portraits. Also, don’t try to contemplate Karl’s little haikus because they are nonsense.
I added in the last little bit for good measure, just in case there was still any doubt out there. Anyway, a few days pass and I get the following response: jiyan - the title of my web page means ‘a reminder of death’ in Latin. i didn’t take it from the short story that ‘memento’ was based on. i actually swiped it from an old art history text.
I thought it was funny that she was so horrified that someone might have construed that she would be so mainstream to steal the name from a film. God forbid that she steal the name from a film! It was an old art history text of course. Incidentally, the only thing that is “a reminder of death” in her website is her self-portraits.
Anyway, Karl deemed fit to write a counter-response to my commentary in her guestbook, which I offered a counter-counter response and this morning, I received the following message from the girl: you know, i could do without the sarcasm. if you have something to say, go right ahead and say it. otherwise, please stop spamming my guestbook with inane comments.
So it was out of a sincere love for my fellow human being that I wrote her an e-mail this morning telling her that “I wasn’t being sarcastic, please stop taking yourself so seriously.” And to be honest, she probably could use a little bit of sarcasm in her profound and ultra-important life. She could also use a few other things, but that is a story for another day. Anyway, the moral of this story is that if you don’t have something to say like “your art is transcendent and reminds me of the time that I became a man,” don’t bother writing in artist’s guestbooks.
