David Petersen Artworks

Well it seems the fun has begun. Not just in Denver, where upwards of 100 people were arrested yesterday with 50-60 of them still being detained, dozens were pepper sprayed, pepper balled or whapped with a baton, and the Po-Po is donning brand spanking new uniforms that provide zero identification - no badges, no names, no numbers, no chance of disciplinary action; but in Minneapolis as well, where a trio of bicycling activists from NYC were detained and relieved of their video and still cameras, cell phones, computer equipment, clothing and money. Meanwhile, CNN, despite their gigantic media presence, can report no protest in Denver other than a very quiet iReport of a couple dozen anti-abortion folks who appear to have brazenly set up camp beyond the city limits, and the closest Minneapolis’ main media outlet gets to covering the arrest of bicyclists is a story about a motorcyclist popping a wheelie at 150 mph and still being able to make a cell phone call.

The award for most fabulously audacious and absurdly beautiful act of protest goes to the kids in Denver, whose project ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ was only partially unsuccessful when they were unable to levitate the Denver Mint.

I am having a difficult time deciding whether I will participate in the shenanigans next week, and if so, to what extent. One side of me defiantly says, ‘That there is no way I am going all the way over to St. Paul for some mace in the face.’ Another voice practically claims, ‘Well, I could see getting all worked up if this convention thing was in Mpls. but it isn’t so let’s just hang out at the gallery.’ Old guy with squeaky knees and gnarled back bemoans the fact that he is a Daddy now and thus it would be irresponsible to risk apprehension or physical harm to either himself or daughter. The idealist buried deep down is dying to be heard, hollering that standing up to the powers that be is in fact the only responsible thing to do, that the best way to protect his daughter’s future is to work to put an end to this madness now. A cynical reply doubts any of this is going to change a damn thing because while everyone is distracted by the festivities of the conventions the machinery of oppression and exploitation marches on as it has for the past twelve thousand years. Super angry guy grumbles that ‘they won’t get away with this shit.’

By all accounts only about 50,000 protester types will be heading into downtown St. Paul on Labor Day for the big ‘March’ or ‘Protest’ or whatever is going on. Which doesn’t seem like enough. Now, I am not the best mathematician, but if it is true that the cops are counting on amassing a force of 3500, that would mean that each one would have to fend off 14.28 protesters if everyone of those protesters could somehow simultaneously go apeshit and storm the convention. If that were the case, I don’t see how the police would survive. Plus, from all the video coming out of Denver, which isn’t much but IndyMedia has it, cops don’t like to fight one-on-one, rather they prefer a 6-1 cop to protester ratio. If that were the case, and again my math could be faulty, the poice would only be able to deal with 583.333 protesters at any given time, leaving 49,416.667 protesters to go buck wild for the palace. So why are the protesters the underdogs again?

For the art folks, who undoubtedly have the same multitude of voices in their heads as to how they should most effectively participate during these very active times, there are myriad events in town offering alternatives to the meat and potatoes rabble-rousing going on over in the Capitol. There’s the Liberty Parade and the Unconvention and the Yard Sign Project and the Peace Island Picnic and of course I cannot forget to plug Domestic Struggle, Part Threee, an exhibit at Art of This with the subtitle Songs of Returning, Both Silent and Aloud. Or is the title the other way around? Any way, there is plenty of activity for those who are seeking to avoid a canister of pepper spray being unleashed into their eyeballs.

Nonetheless, the fun has indeed begun for cops and artists alike.

Well for those of you that enjoy clogging your arteries with deep fried chocolate-covered bacon, or lard-wrapped pickles on beef jerky sticks, or cannot resist inhaling the piss and shit stench of barn after barn of semi-humane animal pens featuring ‘the world’s largest boar,’ or are fond of wearing over-sized Spongebob Squarepants t-shirts that conceal the horror that are your cut-off denim shorts and cottage cheese-curdled thighs, or thirst kicking back with a 32 oz. plastic bucket of lukewarm Miller Genuine Draft Light with your 14-year old girlfriend from back home Po-dunkville who just wouldn’t take no for an answer when she heard Travis Tritt was making a record-breaking 13th appearance in the Grandstand, happy days to you, you sick, demented imbecile, it is Minnesota State Fair time.
Q-What gives, Petersen? You are not even going to get near the Fair.

You bet your ass I am not. I won’t even put foot in St. Paul for the next two/three weeks. Got to give them ample time to scrub out all the mud and stink, sweep up the litter of grease-covered sticks and scrape the caramel from the streets, and of course bulldoze all the immobile bloated folks who overindulged on the mini-donuts and cheese curds into a deep pit.

Q-So you have at least been to the Fair then?

Oh, it was a most unfortunate experience bordering on child abuse. Dragged kicking and screaming across the river, down a gridlocked Snelling Avenue, through the turnstile, past a bunch of shiny and completely obsolete-in-the-city farm implements to the giant yellow slide where I was carried like a sack of potatoes to the top, stuffed into a splintery burlap sack that had somehow snagged some other poor kid’s retainer, and shoved down the boringest and least exhilarating hill of all time, where upon reaching the bottom I was struck in the temple by a freshly buttered ear of corn that some rube couldn’t keep his mitts on while hauling ass to be the first in line to the unveiling of the ‘Butter Queen’ sculpture. Probably ironic somehow.

Q-Could you describe the ‘Butter Queen’ sculpture?

It’s totally terrifying. Some poor female teenager is forced to having her likeness carved from a large frozen chunk of that ‘famous’ Minnesota butter. Supposedly this is a good thing, but I have been told that she is always heavily sedated from the carving until the conclusion of the Fair.

Q-Are there any contests that would be worth a visit to the Fair?

Don’t bother, don’t fucking bother. Plus, there are so many of them - prettiest butter queen, best honey bee, biggest incapacitated boar, hungriest homeless person, hairiest Uncle Herb, most ridiculous invention invented by an 8-year old from a town that has less than 3,000 people, etc, that the spirit of ‘contest’ has lost all meaning. There’s even some art contest to see who can paint the loveliest sunset on Lake Minnetonka or take the black and whitest black and white photo of a pair of clutching hands or a bunch of birch trees. The sculpture category is exclusively abstractions in brushed metal. Oooh la la.

Q-Have you ever entered the Fair’s art contest?

Hey, no offense to the hard work of the folks who want to have their efforts displayed two doors down from the state’s largest muskmelon, but there’s no chance of catching a glimpse of any of my work at the Fair. There’s an entry fee.

Q-Is it just that you are a cheapskate?

Yes. Plus I don’t paint or photograph or sculpt or carve or draw or cartoon or design or much of any thing else. I don’t fit the format.

Q-What do you do then?

Conceptualize!

Whoa, I thought these was the Dog Days. Ain’t this spposed to be when y’alls had it up to here with the infernal heat and humidity, all them bug bites and poison ivys reddenen up yer legs. Too many cookouts, too many trips to the lake, too many fat ass mans with no shirt and short shorts getting their tans on. And too many art openings with the cheap wines and Pabstes and “You got dressed up for this shit?” and nonchalant yet falsified sophisticatated looks at the walls and “Hey, grrrrreat show, man” and too many times you have to roll the eyes up in to yer head cause J Christ if I see that one more goddamn time inside or out, big or small, red or blue or whatever the F you call that color…Too too many.

But no, not this summer. It ain’t going to get like that. It just ain’t been being like that. Not that I been seeing. Other than the fat mans and fuschias, this has been one of the most uniquenessest summers of all times. There was first off, the kids in the super villain costumes that strobed in the darkness and somehow stuck around to discuss the finer points of Litterachure and “La Plage” and it’s cool that y’all haven’t had me over for a nightcap yet. That’s how super villains roll. Some time-travelers showed up from the future only to take us back like 40 whole years so we could see someswhat how we got to be wheres we at. Then, a foursome of corporate porno-clowns rolled in and blew our minds with shiny new machines that do the un-supposed-to-doable. And one hells of a sale pitch. Unfortunate-like we won’t be forgetting the naked kid who was dissing and pissing on the paintings we all wish we had mades, they was just that good. Hey, Naked kid, don’t you come around now ya hear?
There was some other haters along the way, a couple of them tried and true, oops, I meant tired and fucking boring old folks thinking they knows everything by saying that the young kids think they knows everything even though they just doing the same things over and over that have alreadys been tried by some young kids that are now old or better, dead. Theys might know who they are, if theys ain’t taking a nap at 2:30 in the afternoon while the Trinitron blares Matlock or Mama’s Family. Theys probably the ones that came up with the notions of the Dog Days in the first place, cause I guess they just ain’t gots the stamina. That’s too bad, theys really missing out on some real high grade just cause theys refusing to remove their blinders of having ’seens’ it all before. At least Naked kid wasn’t a know-it-alls.

If theres been anything to hit with the nitpicks this summer, its been the just that, them folkses that just ain’t quite getting their ways so they tries to drag everybody else into their mess. I’s don’t even have nothing to say to that kind of sorry business of undies in a bunch when alls you have to do is see that your problems ain’t the center of attentions no more. Look at here: I gots some serious spinal issues, the kind that wakes me from my slumbers and is ex-asserbated by like 50 different damn things, whether its the age nearer 40 every day or the kids climbing up my legs or the endless drinking or the nagging about my shitty Chef-Boy-R-Dees dinners or half a dozen deadlines that just ain’t gonna get made. But am I sending you a sad sap letter all drippy with tears and goo so yous can make it all better? Hell the F no. Do you see me typing up some phony baloney notes and shoven em into jars for a shelf of self pity, woe is me, make it all better? Would you even give half a rats hind end if I come banging on yer doors right about dinner times like the Greenpeace looking for a dollar worth of dimes so the inflatable sea raft can get just a few meters closer to the SS ExxonMobilCondaleezaRice so we can alls make it all better?

Nobodys seems to want to take care of their owns during the Dog Days.

Predictions #1. Look for a big ole disappointment come elections time when the self-proclaiming lefty folks that have ‘had it up to hear’ with the spensive gas and the wars that kill a bunch of kids they don’t knows and the foreclosures making the neighborhood values plummet can’t quite bring themselfs to vote - for the uppity black guy who behaving like he might have an actual chance at getting presidential,how dare he? - cause as it turns out Tuesdays after work is Bikram Yoga night.

Predictions #2. I can never get over the urges of using ad hominem attacks when trying to counter the nonsensicals of old fuddy duddies who can’t seem to leave their own decrepit baggage at the thresholds of today. There I goes again.

Predictions #3. This scene we all thinks we are such a big and vitalistic part of will always be far biggers than any single of us regardlessness of how young or old or connected to the West Bank or NYC and that as soon as you start shouting all ‘they way it used to be’ it is a sure as shit signal that you gots left behind at least five summers ago, cause you gots no stamina for the Dog Days.

Enough sweatin’ to the oldies, let’s get back to the funs.