The LC Presents: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Larryville Art! / Plus, The Recession Hits Downtown Larryville, Vol. III

So last night Richard found himself at the packed opening of the Percolator's "Apocalypse/Utopia" exhibition, intently studying a piece constructed by the Vice President of East Lawrence that involved a small plastic cow which appeared to be excreting a beautiful field of brightly colored objects (the title: "In the future all our shit will be beautiful"). In a state of art-induced bliss, he turned around and found himself face to face with someone wearing a mask that appeared to be a combination of the V for Vendetta and Scream masks. Richard stifled a scream of his own, but the figure gave him a thumbs-up and went about its way (later he was told that the masked figure was almost certainly the Vice President herself). As soon as he was able to relax again, the peace was shattered by a booming voice ordering the crowd to "Please exit the building. The apocalypse is approaching." Not wanting to spend his last minutes on earth in the Percolater, Richard complied. Outside, a crowd gathered and was given notes leading them to another space (presumably a bomb shelter?). At this point, Richard's main concern was whether or not he could carry his beer along. Luckily, he was assured by his friend Dave that open-container laws were probably fairly lax during an acopalypse, and four blocks later the crowd found themselves in another artspace and ushered into chairs, at which point a young man told the crowd that we'd be witnessing a forty-minute staged reading of his play "The Rattler," which consisted mostly of him intoning "First I was abused, then I became the abuser," while a woman playing a dominatrix stood nearby cracking a small whip and a narrator explained the stage directions: "During his last sentence, she whips him." As it turned out, this was not the apocalypse, but in its own way it was much, much worse.

At any rate, this is the state of local art, and Richard remains a bit uncertain why everyone was ordered to leave the actual opening itself after only one hour of its three hour run time. If he were an artist, though, he'd probably understand.

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The "economic crisis" recently morphed into an official "recession" (Chip: "I won't start to worry until they call it a 'depression'"), and another victim is falling in Larryville next week: Freeman's Used Furniture, 1145 Pennsylvania, a 40 year, family-owned local business.

Chip: "Used furniture stores attract a lot of hippies, but at least it keeps them from 'dumpster diving' in my alley, which is what they call their habit of rooting through filth. So I actually kind of hate to see this place go. Even so, it would be great if we could get a nice IKEA location here in town."

Richard: "I hate to hear this. Now we'll be forced to be shop at that used joint on Iowa where the owner forces his employees to stand by the highway wearing ridiculous costumes."