Yap for art!

by Bill Davenport May 24, 2009

Here in Texas, where the tiniest details of the public education curriculum are decided not by educators, but the state legislature, lawmakers are debating the current one-credit fine arts graduation requirement for Texas high school students. On Monday, May 18, the House refused to accept Senate amendments that specified the one-credit high school fine arts graduation requirement and the middle school fine arts requirement, so there's a wrangle. We, the arts community, are supposed to put in a yap for art to our state representatives: Rep Rob Eissler (The Woodlands) (512) 463-0797; Rep Scott Hockberg (Houston) (512) 463-0492; Rep. Harold Dutton (Houston)(512) 463-0510; Rep. Michael Villarreal (San Antonio)(512) 463-0532; Rep. Jim Keffer (Eastland)(512) 463-0656. Apparently, aside from being good for the soul and improving math scores, art is threatened by a mandate for P.E.!

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Asshole February 13, 2009 - 16:08

Who’s the perv in the back?

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theremin February 14, 2009 - 04:32

Hail Mary, Full of Grace!

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Asshole February 14, 2009 - 06:56

That must be Bruce in the back.

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bruce February 14, 2009 - 15:30

Bruce hearts Asshole.
Perv? God almighty, he’s the only normal one there!

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bruce February 14, 2009 - 15:59

get yer referneces right.

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Asshole February 15, 2009 - 10:01

Actually the sentiment of the Baby Jesus is disconnected from the moral code of the time, therefore it re-enforces his status as wholly separate from the sentient world of goo.

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bruce February 15, 2009 - 11:26

Moral code of the time? Didn’t ‘the church’ invent right and wrong? There was a good reason those monkey researchers hid the fact that monkey mothers were eating their own infants and their neighbor’s infants too. Not nice behavior doesn’t film well or fill coffers. Oh wait!! I forgot all about the porn industry. Scratch that line of thought altogether.

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Asshole February 15, 2009 - 20:50

Naw, a tiger shark’s like a garbage can, it’ll eat anything. Someone probably threw that in a river.

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bruce February 16, 2009 - 15:52

no mention of the knife and half ‘grapefruit’ that almost exactly mirrors Mary’s boob. (I’m afraid to even Google the image of Jesus’ boy parts for fear of laughing until I cry.)

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bruce February 16, 2009 - 17:08

But then I can do anything; I’m the chief of police.

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Asshole February 16, 2009 - 19:16

I thought you were the chef of police.

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Trungpa Ricochet February 17, 2009 - 09:29

VATICAN CITY–When freelance writer David Farley first visited Calcata, Italy, five years back, he figured it would make for a colourful article for a travel magazine.


But Calcata’s most remarkable attraction – and the subject of a book that Farley is now writing – turned out to be something no longer there: the supposed foreskin of Jesus Christ.

For more than four centuries, the “Holy Prepuce” had been the city’s treasure, kept behind bronze doors over the altar in the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. It was displayed every year on Jan. 1, the Feast of the Holy Circumcision.

At one time, pilgrims who came to venerate it were rewarded with an indulgence that cut 10 years from purgatory.

To believers in Jesus’ Resurrection, Farley notes, the foreskin is “one of the only conceivable parts of his body that he could have left on earth.”

Legend holds that the Emperor Charlemagne received the object from an angel, then gave it to Pope Leo III in the year 800. It supposedly remained in the papal collection until the early 16th century, when a looting German soldier brought it to Calcata.

At one point in the Middle Ages, Farley says, there were as many as 18 putative Holy Foreskins in various monasteries and towns in Europe, most of them in France.

By the 20th century, all but one had quietly disappeared.

The specimen in Calcata finally vanished in 1983,

Silence is in fact the church’s official policy on the subject, Farley says. He speaks of Vatican decrees from 1900 and 1954 that he says threaten excommunication of anyone who writes or speaks the relic’s name, in order to discourage “irreverent curiosity.”

But even if the Holy Prepuce is not gone for good, Farley thinks it’s unlikely to be held up again as an object of veneration.

“I think most people would agree that it won’t do the church any good to get publicity” of that kind, he said.

“Most people still snicker about it.”

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Asshole February 19, 2009 - 23:20

Of course you’re not going to catch a film like Black Snake Moan in theaters. Why would you? You have to save your pennies for the summertime, when the sequels are dumped out into the alley for you to gnaw on. Then, after you have enjoyed your effete pirate adventure or racist motorcycle comedy, you can check out the new PDA covers at the Verizon store, hit Chili’s for a few discount margaritas, and head home in time to watch “Cold Case,” which you shrewdly TiVoed. If you play your cards right, there won’t be a single time this season that you are left out of a water-cooler conversation or made to ponder the meaning of a Leno joke. Movies like Black Snake and The Lookout will soon be made extinct, of course, as will unironic T-shirts and fistfighting. But in your cozy, simple world, not unlike a dog’s, those things will barely register. As long as you can still sneak a half-caf latte into Shrek 4, you and Hollywood have an understanding.

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bruce February 21, 2009 - 18:41

Dog’s world’s are anything but simple. But how would you know? Most cat people I know are hopeless snobs in need of no one. Maybe that person is tired of being disappointed . I known I am. I like being somewhat ‘needed’.
Off to buy ‘Vita’ extra hot horse radish, garlic and free range eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe(very probably) you aren’t speaking to me. But I always take it that way. I drink at home. You know that.

I wouldn’t live in New York for all the rice in China.

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bruce February 21, 2009 - 20:12

Dog’s worlds are anything but simple. But how would you know? Most of the cat people I know are hopeless snobs in need of no one. Maybe that person is tired of being disappointed. I known I am. I like being needed.
Off to buy ‘Vita’ extra hot horseradish, fresh garlic and free range eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe you aren’t actually speaking to me. But I always take it that way. But you know that.

I wouldn’t live in New York for all the tea either

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bruce February 21, 2009 - 20:19

Boy I wonder.

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bruce February 22, 2009 - 17:18

Oh Roy,
Any chance you want to ‘interpret’ that knife and the severed fruit?
I’m betting not.
(Please call someone, most likely some underpaid assistant to someone who should know, but who won’t answer your phone calls) at the museum and please, please let US ALL know.

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Asshole February 23, 2009 - 16:14

Did you convict?

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bruce February 24, 2009 - 11:39

“After a conviction, convicts often become prisoners.”
Who are they kidding? We’re (all of us) prisoners long before that.
I think that knife and cut fruit means babies are a pain in the ass, no matter who the father is.

(I wish you wouldn’t block my emails. We could say all this in private.)
Alas.

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Asshole February 24, 2009 - 13:18

I didn’t block your emails. Don’t be silly.

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bruce February 24, 2009 - 13:29

Someone blocked them. I haven’t been able to talk too you in over a year. Try as i might. They all get bounced back to me saying you no longer want to talk to me. Not that I blame you.

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bruce February 24, 2009 - 13:37

to you
They told me you blocked me. (again, not that I blame you.) But that knife cut deep.
You didn’t block me?
Don’t lie. I can’t stand a liar. A cheat and a thief, maybe, but not a liar.

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bruce February 24, 2009 - 13:52

Please call. Clear the air. I won’t remember it anyway.

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bruce February 24, 2009 - 14:14

One day Horton the elephant hears a tiny voice calling from a clover flower drifting on the wind, and realises that the flower contains a speck of dust, which in turn contains an entire civilisation, whose most brilliant but derided scientist is trying to communicate with the outside world. Unfortunately Horton’s jungle companions deem him as mad as the Who scientist, and shun him, threatening both his existence and that of the Whos.

(I’m not entirely above kicking the living shit out of your overweight alter ego if he did this. We weigh about the same now.)

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Asshole February 24, 2009 - 15:17

Didn’t block your mail. Geez. I’ll look at it and see what is the problem. Sorry.

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bruce March 1, 2009 - 17:26

OK. He didn’t. It was all my fault.
I can’t seem to help but screwing things up.
Wishful thinking, some would say.

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