PICK-A-'P' for POSEURS - PROFOUND

IDES OF MARCH
The 15th of March, according to the Julian calendar; the Julian calendar amended the Roman calendar; the Julian calendar was born in 46 B.C.; two years after the creation of the Julian calendar, its founder was slaughtered; the Liberatores who assassinated Julius Caesar committed, in their words, “tyrannicide”; a couple years ago, I found myself in Washington D.C. during the Ides of March; my friend Pamela, who was working at the Smithsonian, told me about a secret collection of seized war art—owned by the U.S. military; she asked if I’d like to see the secret art collection; I said yes, of course; the collection was in the basement of an anonymous D.C. office building (standing between a hotel and a Starbucks); the collection was viewable by special appointment only; after checking in at a security desk and leaving our driver’s licenses, we were led to the basement by a talkative, middle-aged curator; we passed through a series of doors and finally arrived at a set of thick metal doors requiring a security code; our guide typed the code and we entered the storeroom; the sight was a mundane nightmare: hundreds of Nazi propaganda paintings seized at the end of World War II (featuring Adolph Hitler in various Norman Rockwell-esque portraits, standing in Bavarian town squares, surrounded by a crowd of children with ice cream cones and adorable puppies, to whom Herr Wolf was no doubt telling a rousing joke about strudel, or gypsies); in the corner was a massive steel bust of Hitler’s face, sitting on its side, with a yellow note card reading: “Hitler head, artist unknown”; there were also paintings of Saddam Hussein seized during the first and second Gulf Wars; the curator took joy in watching Pamela and I try to make sense of the startling collection; after 45 minutes, the curator quietly asked: “Want to see the prize of the collection?”; we silently nodded, and were led through another set of locked doors into a cramped room with a filing cabinet against the wall; the curator unlocked one of the drawers and slid it open, revealing six watercolors painted by a young art student named Adolph; the watercolors were all postcard-sized images of nature settings and town squares; these paintings were competent, realistic renderings, a bit stale, but not bad; I was reminded of the title of Hannah Arendt’s most famous work: “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”; I then ascended the steps and went to get a Venti Americano at Starbucks; I called my then-girlfriend to tell her about the breathtaking tour; she answered the phone from an airport in Houston, crying; I had no idea why she was in an airport; she said she was flying to San Francisco to see her cousins; she was distraught; “I need to be with people who love me,” she said; she then turned off her phone and flew to Atlanta; she spent the next five days with her ex-boyfriend; this was not a good time for me; it ended badly, and too late; St. Ides is a popular malt liquor marketed towards African-Americans and enjoyed across America by teenage suburban poseurs; about St. Ides, the Notorious B.I.G. rhymed: “I used to be a hustla/now I’m a 22 brew guzzla”; Ice Cube, in one of his numerous raps shilling St. Ides, spat the line: “Yes, it’s the S-T Crooked I-D-E-S”; Elliot Smith, who died too young (stabbed like a suicidal Samurai), sang: “When I walk around here drunk every night/with an open container from 7-11/In St. Ides Heaven/I’ve been out haunting the neighborhood/and everybody can see I’m no good”; my favorite line of dialogue from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is said to Cassius by Brutus in Act V, Scene I: “…this same day/Must end that work the Ides of March begun./And whether we shall meet again I know not./Therefore our everlasting farewell take:/ Forever and forever farewell, Cassius!/ If we do not meet again, why, we shall smile;/ If not, why, then this parting was well made.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Beware the Ides of March… What is an Ides?
Recycle this!