2. Caroline Mosby’s Forwarded Jokes | Timothy Comeau
What is it about creativity that turns some of us into Shakespeare and others into designers of porno sites? I am really rather enthralled by the diversity of expression available to us both as creators and “consumers of creative products” to put it in a contemporary way. The old boring debate about low-brow and high-brow has a new dimension now that people are actually spending a considerable amount of time producing animated gifs and other photoshop kitsch.
Last fall I was added to the mailing list of Caroline Mosby, who would appear to be a node in the network of forwards and replies. Since September I have been occasionally receiving sexually suggestive animated gif’s and jpegs, which I often don’t find that har-har funny, since my sense-of-humour is more attuned to Kids in The Hall type absurdity and deadpan understatement. However, I still really like seeing what’s out there, and some of them have been worth noting.
The highlights:
Email with the subject line, “Nice Art” featuring various examples of body painting. The nipple of a breast becomes the nose of a cartoony mouse, female pubic hair becomes the beard of a man and the nest of a bird, a penis painted gray becomes the trunk of an elephant.
Email with the subject line, “You named it what!?” featuring photographs of restaurants, tackle shops, and road signs with improbable but real names, most from the website, http://www.geetrish.com. Buy fish and tackle gear at “Master-Baiter” ; Eat at “Lick-a-chick Restaurant” or at “Fuk-Mi Sushi and Seafood Buffet”. Also featured, a gravestone for a couple with the last name “Kaput”, a restaurant or high-end store named “Cocks”, and a road sign for a place named “Dick Lick Springs”.
Last November, I received an image of a school project that involved growing cacti, only the school decided to use clown pots, where the plant was supposed to grow from the clown’s baggy pants. Some months later, after these children had planted and watered their little cacti, the clowns all appeared to have massive erections. I appreciated getting a glimpse into utter stupidity. Shouldn’t this have been forseen – what were they thinking? But the colours are really nice.
Before Christmas I received an animated gif of a snowman who popped a boner when a snowwomen with breasts scooted on by. Unbalanced by the weight of his erection, he toppled over. I appreciated this one for its simplicity and skillful rendering.
Recently I was sent a picture of an obese orgy, with the subject line, “What really goes on at Jenny Craig.” I don’t think making fun of fat people is funny, for reasons both obvious and not, but no matter – I found the composition engaging and liked seeing the exaggeration of the human form. I began a drawing of it, and working on the drawing I began to think Jenny Saville, Lucien Freud, and Rubens enjoy painting fat because of the sensuality of mixing caucasian flesh-tone paint. Obesity produces such a rich quality of tones – from browns to blues to white and orange, contained within the template upon which we have based so much of our aesthetics – the human body – but it is the human body baroque, the template exaggerated.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of receiving a compilations of brain-teasers and optical illusions that have being going around the net for years. I was familiar with some of them, and others were new to me. It was really a nice way to start the day, to be hypnotized by the spinning op-art gifs and the “stare at this for 30 seconds then look away” picture tricks.All in all, it has made the past few months more interesting than it would have been otherwise, and I look forward to see what will be coming up next. If you would like to be added to Caroline’s email list, send a message to car_o_line009@hotmail.com.
Rating (for the list as a whole): 7/10
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