Le Grand Flop
Well, let’s recap the weekend that was all things Des Derrières, beginning with three body cavity searches at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. As it turns out, with all the extra expense required for Homeland Security personnel, they don’t provide the “inspectors” with lubircated latex anymore. You heard me. This penetrating experience naturally led the trio to the nearest bar where they began an epic evening of drinking, all the while conceptualizing their exhibition that was to open in only two nights’ time. Somehow, though, they forgot they were scheduled to appear on live radio the following morning, to discuss phony francophiles and the fraud that is Godard, as well as the genius that their exhibition would conceal. With this slip of the inebriated mind, they awoke the following morning not twleve minutes before airing, polished off four espressoes a piece, and strolled into the studio with not a moment to spare. That was the good news. The bad was the overwhelming air conditioning of the studio that literally froze them in their seats, disabling most synapses from properly firing, thus pulling off one of the greatest live radio bombs of all time. How many times did they need to break the silence that was their inability to answer simple questions with the statement “Dead Air?” The damage had been done.
Not to the heroes of this tale, however, as the caffeine was kicking in now. They were escorted to several requested locations, picking up necessary materials, scoring painkillers, tranquillizers and hallucinogens, and posting 1950’s Soviet propaganda on the front doors of preschools they came across. They finally reached the gallery to begin the tedious task of both remembering and physically producing the work they concocted the night before. It took about a half an hour, but they pulled it off, producing, editting and installing their entire exhibition. Back to the bar.
The evening of the exhibition’s opening couldn’t have begun better. The very first patrons, a fatherly-looking fellow with a young boy walked in, began a slow stroll around the gallery, and came upon the work “Cash Cow,” a late-Renaissance painting of a color wheel with a two dollar bill in the middle of it. Well it was there, until the snotnosed four-year old kid yanked it off the cheap canvas board. Naturally, a fist fight ensued and, after the three thugs that are Des Derrières polished off this kleptomaniac and his old man, after some fat-assed cops showed up, after the three aforementioned thugs were cuffed and stuffed, after the gallery was closed down for selling alcohol to minors and pregant women, after the landlord showed up to change the locks on the doors, none other than art historian extrodinaire Benjamin Buchloh showed up to take a piss on the windows of the gallery. The final joke was on him though, as his enlarged prostate prohibited even a drop from reaching its desired destination.
As I write this, the D.D. trio, Elsworth von Hecht, Mason Kragthorpe and Henry Papier, are each set to begin 6-9 months for assault and battery, plus an extra stint at Sing Sing back in New York due to the parole violation that was pummeling a Kindergartener and a his hemophiliac father. Correspondence can be sent to the Lino Lakes Detention Center, PO Box 1632, Lino Lakes, MN 55222.