The Installation Art of War

Start calling me Patton, folks, because I just finished reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I was ready for action! Damn, I was glowing like I had five stars, two pearl-handled revolvers and was leading the 3rd Army across the Siegfried Line into Nazi Germany. Hungry for more knowledge, I decided to open up the local news section in the paper. (It was the only other thing I had in the crapper to read). The words “Art Contest -- Win Money” stared me in face. They tempted me like a hot stripper whose gyrating hips could drain me of my last dollar or like Satan trying to trick Christ into jumping off a cliff. Since I had already spent my last dollar, the cliff was my only option. So my thoughts took a leap of faith… I was ready for a battle with the muses.

Classic painters like Van Gogh had talent, but Andy Warhol and the likes ushered in a tsunami of caca from which the world is yet to recover. This meant that untalented bums like Shell and I could enter an “art contest” and possibly score a few bucks, a little fame in the local press and get a few chicks, too. Now if my roommate Shell and I had talent for anything, well, it was for being shysters. We could pull wool over the eyes of the best of them. No shame! Nope we had nothing constricting us like a conscious or a hope for heaven. Come to think of it, the only reason we weren’t on top of the world was because we procrastinated so damned much.

Flush I finished my business on the toilet and rushed out to share my new idea with Shell. He had his feet propped up on the kitchen table and was eating around the mold on the Wonder Bread loaf.

“Gotta’ a way we can score cash and girls…”

The sports section dipped below his chin and his eyebrow raised, “yes, pray tell.”

“There’s an art show downtown. I mean a contest. Anyone can enter. It’s modern art which means it can be anything. We can do that shit, most definitely. Look at all these New York bozos making millions by splattering paint on a canvass or hanging a bunch of oranges from a ceiling and putting up a sign that says ‘orange.’” Now, I knew damned well we had no chance in hell of winning, but I was bored. And boredom is the mother pranksters.

“Alright, you have a point. But what you don’t have is the faux sophistication nor the homo-style sensibility to ever convince a crowd of wannabe art lovers that we are artistes. Shell had to say the French word, artistes. It was his way of cutting me down at the knees. “So, what’s your big idea… You know this bread isn’t all bad, you got to chew around the mold… still edible.”

I wanted to take the art world by storm and my roommate was devouring a penicillin experiment, great. “Well, I got an idea from Rumsfeld. Remember our basketball game with him? We could do a piece on the war…”

“What are you talking about, a piece on the war? Whatever we do it’s going to be a piece of shit,” he said, letting out a belch and then scratched his nuts. Shelly liked to argue for argument's sake. I knew he'd want to be in on the action. I rolled out my plan like a Latin American death-squad commandant who had CIA support for a coup de'etat. We lit up our cigars and bathed in the tobacco drenched air. A few hours and a couple drinks later, we were in business and on our way to the show.

We installed our gift to the art world right in the middle of the room. Yep, notice that I didn't say "put up" or "hang." NO... We installed this mother. The sexy mannequin was standing atop several sandbags. She was dressed camoflage mini-shorts and a matching tank top with one breast hanging out. She had on a red, white and blue thong that was hiked up so everyone could see it. Hundreds of little green army men were glued to her legs. They were charging from out of her snatch, which had a neon sign around it that glowed: POWER! At her feet lay strips of bacon. Above it all hung a banner that read: "Pussy Command: sign up to be fucked by the USA!"

As the art-loving singles and dinks of Cleveland gathered round our monument to the Greek Goddess, we heard gasps... awkward silence... nervous laughter... and outright disgust... I loved it all. Shell and I were dressed up like two pigs, wearing berets. We danced around the exhibit -- okay, the monstrosity -- and made squealing noises. We were handing out photos of women in camouflage lingerie with captions like: "Get fucked, join the Army!"

"Like, oh my gawd..." A twenty-something blonde in a little red dress said. "What is this? It's like rude to women..."

Her GQ-esque boyfriend chimed in, "Ah, yeah, I think it is rude and mean to women..." He didn't know exactly what was wrong with it, but knew that contradicting his lady meant no sex later.

Beefcake Johnson grabbed Shelly by throat and threatened to kill him: "You mother fucking al-Qaeda supporter. Stop bashing our troops and the US of A." Beefcake corralled everyone into singing "God Bless America." No one wanted to be accused of anti-patriotism. Even the liberal candidate for Ohio's attorney general's seat and the hippie chick with a Grateful Dead tee-shirt joined in the hymn. We were S.O.L.

Apparently while this commotion was occurring, Shell told the event organizer to "eat the shit from his balls..." Any chance of staying in the contest was lost. I packed up what I could of our stuff and tried to hitch a ride home. I kept thinking that I should have studied Sun Tzu more closely.

The master of battle wrote: “Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.”

Meanwhile, Shell had called Stara, a hot law school student, and got his thing on with her. She was all anti-establishment this and that. The whole thing turned her on immensely. I was too tired to desire anything. I put the idea factory on idle. I decided to watch George C. Scott's Patton for the umpteenth time. I must have still been searching for a way to be a real patriot. Then it came to me: Liberate Paris. Oh yes, I'd love to liberate Ms. Hilton... yummy.

... And boredom is the mother pranksters.

Coming Soon: The Devil You Know and the Devil You Don't