I wanted to call this post "Griffito Exposé," because it sounded cooler, but you know, grammar.
Ahem.
That said, ovder the past week or so, I have chosen to document some of the choicer selections of our environ's more tasteful expressions of urban discontent.
Functioning as my co-commentator for this critique is none other than the illustrious Freddie Wong, a man whose numerous explorations into the tortured soul of Realist
Urban Expressionism have left him in a far greater position to comment on such matters than I, a mere scholar of Suburban Romantic Escapism/Monumentalism. After all, as the saying goes,
ex urbe veniet nihil. Without further ado, let us beginthis afternoon's exploration:
Freddie: There are three Ls in Killer. It's like he was like "This is not KILLLER ENOUGH."
Max: This is true. Notice the broad sweep of the horizontal rule between the two words.
Freddie: Do you think he carved his moniker with his KILLING IMPLEMENT?
Max: Yes.
Freddie: Killer Mack apparently operates with rusty nails on the sidewalk.
Max: It is almost as iff the KILLLER subsumed the MACK-- a comment on the Id's ultimate triumph over Ego?
Freddie: Maybe this is some sort of cryptic cry for help from one of his victims - she lies there, bleeding atop newly poured concrete, and in a bloody haze, scrawls the clues onto the sidewalk to her killer. Now, it's up to a ragtag team of detectives to find the killer before he KILLLS AGAIN.
Max: Or perhaps, this is the greatest of all Mack Daddies with all the skillz to killl.
Freddie: The symbol in between is a crude representation of the ever present bulge in his pants.
Max: I have nothing to say to that.
Freddie: Killler, baby.
Freddie: This is short and to the point. I like it.
Max: PUTA!
Freddie: Did you write this?
Max: No. I only wish I had the audacity to.
Freddie: I love the artist's choice of a bold, yet refined, rounded sans-serif fontface as if he is saying "Yes, you are a puta, but one with class."
Max: there's something disctinvtive about this piece, like the ripe smell of a whore's undegarments-- but something dignified.
Freddie: What would the purpose of this be? Some two-bit whore walks by turning tricks on Vermont, sees this graffito, realizes the wickedness of her ways, and then becomes a pole dancer in a club on Pico somewhere getting fired for punching out a customer who tries to pull the $2 bill trick.
Freddie: This is the ONLY acceptable outcome.
Max: Or perhaps, enticed by the brazen audacity of the statement, some young thing, unable to fend off the wicked ways of the city becomes seduced by the streetwalker's life of glamour and champagne?
Freddie: Or worse, maybe we're reading this wrong: maybe the person was writing "PUT A FENCE AROUND FRESH CONCRETE." But then... KILLLER MACK CAME AND TOOK CARE OF HIM!
Max: No, this was the other side of the street.
Freddie: Killler Mack has a KILLLER APPENDAGE.
Max: Killler Mack has limited turf.
Freddie: Yeah but he can reach out a "touch" someone with his ding-a-ling.
Max: the M in Mack is for MEMBER.
Freddie: they don't call him Killler for NOTHIN'.
Freddie: IRON MAIDEN! I see a trend here with the killing. People who choose to write on sidewalks have a lot of pent up rage.
Max: Perhaps Iron Maiden themselves wrote this. I mean, when was the last time they toured?
Freddie: That's concrete-roots promotions man. All hiring a roadie all saying "Listen Tim, you find some god damned concrete and you WRITE that we're going on TOUR."
Max: All I know is that know the parking lot of Olympian Burger is fucking metal.
Freddie: The date is 1981 on that patch... !
Freddie: MAYBE THAT WAS THE SPOT WHERE IRON MAIDEN KICKED OFF THE TOUR. The entire band went to Olympian burger, all got burgers, and then said "Oy! Let's rock!"
Max: But right above it is the word "Tour"... but it looks like "Pour." Perhaps, if you wish to make a sacrifice to IRON MAIDEN, that is where you pour your booze (or blood)? Every day, I pass this graffito, and I cannot help but want to get fucking metal; it's like every bloodcell in my body starts head bangin' and throwin' the horns.
Freddie: The spirit of Dave Murray rises out of the concrete and harmonizes some wicked solos and then he grinds his leather crotch in your face. Overall, it is a good experience for everyone involved.
Max: It really enriches the community. I'm glad to live in a place that really values music.
Freddie: I can't imagine the kid who thought writing this would be cool. "Shit man, you know what would rock? let's just CCCAAARRVVVEEE the Iron Maiden tour right here man!" Every stroke of the rusty nail punctuated by the singular thought "I... Am... So... METAL!"
Max: Perhaps his friend then said, "HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWESOME!" and that is where the "Killer" came from. This is such a self-reflexive piece.
Freddie: God damn yes! We are so Post-Modern.
Max: On one hand, it's about Iron Maiden, but on the other, it dares to declare it's own 'Killer-ness.' Killer-ness being second only to KILLLER-ness in terms of prestige around here.
Freddie: Killers was their album in 1981. It places this time capsule squarely in the beginning of the 80's - the ass decade of the 20th century, right after the Great Depression.
Max: That's even better. The graffito has been pre-informed by the album... Dude, you were born in the 80's.
Freddie: I am NOT PROUD OF THIS FACT! The decade started off so promisingly-- "the IRON MAIDEN KILLERS TOUR" and then before you know it--
Max: You were born?
Freddie: --We're trading hostages for guns and yuppies are buying penthouses.
Max: Shit. If only someone had written this on the Berlin Wall, no-one would have dared fuck with it. It would have become a monument to metal.
Freddie: The Wall would be standing still, probably. Like a modern day mecca for metalheads, all marching around it and kissing it.
Max: "The Killers Tour Qa'ba."
Max: Shit, man. Nothing will compare to how metal this was. Let's move on.
Freddie: Next!
Freddie: LOVE ME BABY!
Freddie: I still think it's "Love me Boby."
Max: An urgent, concupiscent cry!
Freddie: But she spelled Bobby wrong, and threw the line to make the 'o' an 'a', saving face in the harsh underground of the Los Angeles street graffiti scene.
Freddie: I notice that this message, a message of love, is hardly visible, while all the ones about killling and putas just about carve themselves all the way through the concrete.
Max: It's totally "Baby"-- it's not like anyone named Robert can be so easily seduced by a concrete siren.
Freddie: It looks like, frankly, it was written by a first-grader who just learned his "letters."
Max: Oh, so we're "quote marking" "letters" now are "we"?
Freddie: Note the mixture of capital and lowercase letters - perhaps a comment on the futility of communication and letters?
Max: Perhaps an expression of the schizoid nature of love?
Freddie: ...And the desire to break away from the confines of human writing into a form of truer expression - probably fingerpainting.
Max: When it comes to concrete graffiti, is that even a line which has to be crossed?
Freddie: The true Avant-Garde must be the first to cross it.
Max: Maybe whoever wrote this did it with a penis? That would explain the bold sweeping lines and the erotic subtext.
Freddie: It is clear we're dealing with the bleeding edge of art fused with profound social commentary here-- the profound use of space, the subtlety of the message, everything points to bona-fide genius!
Max: We must consider also, the orientation it's perpindicular to most other graffiti it's size, as if to turn the concepts it invokes (love, art, the human condition)--
Freddie: --ON THEIR SIDES??
Max: EXACTLY!
Freddie: God I creamed myself just now!
Max: Really, our commentary is exquisite.
Freddie: Not as exquisite as the artist and his message.
Max: I would never dare approach her/his/hir level.
Freddie: Let's move on.
Max: Wait! Wait a moment. Don't you want to consider how the message implicates the viewer?
Freddie: I cannot bear to stare into the brightness of this message any longer, lest my mind be blinded by sheer force of vision.
Max: Fair enough. But perhaps we are the "bobby/baby" who seeks to be loved? I would just like to close in saying--
Freddie: --I can't stop the tears they flow like torrents!
Max: That the visual complexity of the message, which challenges our notions of the gaze as well as interpellation, is as subtle and complex as any of Picasso's renditions of Velazquez's Las Meninas. Alright. Let's move on to KING LIZARD.
Freddie: Oh God! I creamed myself again!
Max: This, this, statement, this proclamation... Its defiance of our current commercial/urban hegemonic modes is shattering. It is almost as if KING LIZARD himself were attempting to tear down the social order around us, the falsehoods of our democracy, and re-instate the monarchy of the ancient world!
Freddie: I wish to someday meet this king and kneel in his presence in the hopes that he will knight me with his lizardly tongue. It would be hot, but in a regal sort of way.
Max: So, you're a sacred whore in his serpentine cult of god-king worship?
Freddie: This is one in a series of King Lizard prints, right?
Max: Yes: the other was too breathtaking to be featured here.
Freddie: Anything is better than the exposed falsehood of my life as I know it - to be a whore to the Lizard King is to evolve into a higher form of being! A higher form of being (that likes it in the butty)! Frankly, the Lizard King demands nothing less from his diciples.
Max: Well, truly. The artist's use of reptilian imagery recalls the reptillian complex of the brain, and with it, almost an atavistic approach to the social contract-- it screams "WE ARE NOT FREE" in our climate of panopticism, consumerism, mass-media-ism!
Freddie: Whoa there slow down with the big words, McLuhan!
Max: Rather than serving as a reactionary attempt to reinstate an old European social order, it recalls Ur and Kush, summoning that mystic deifyied edge of pre-history where humanity first learned to write and had not yet learned to otherize it's many tribes and nations.
Freddie: I imagine the dense urban Los Angeles, overrun with vines, reclaimed by the desert on which it sits so smugly. Atop the ruined skyscrapers of downtown, a golden throne. Atop this throne, the Lizard King, surveying the clearing sunrise. And to his side, I challenge any of the viewers to not imagine themselves dressed as his Lizard Queen.
Max: I am so hard right now.
Freddie: Good - the Lizard King loves that.
Max: I feel almost as if we have stumbled onto some forbidden knowledge; there's a syncreticism and dynamism in this work. A prodigy must be its architect!
Freddie: He flits about in the shadows, waiting for the moment when mankind is at its weakest to pounce upon his righteous throne and enslave us all.
Max: How Lovecraftian. Oh shit! There were a race of serpent-men in his mythos who did worship a Lizard-God!
Freddie: Such amazing pastiche!
Max: Also, it is a
band, I guess.
Freddie: Maybe they're trying to promote their tour.
Max: No, this could be a child's modern day Lascaux, recalling Tyrannosaurus rex! The Tyrant, The Lizard, The King: a triune figure for all that is dark and powerful in every heart.
Freddie: ...Hot.
Max: Indeed.
Max: Let us not dwell on its dark and awesome symbolism any longer.
Freddie: Next!
Freddie: Ok
Max: Our last piece is a bit less primitive, a little more heavily constructed than the sheer balls-to-the-wall awesomeness of King Lizard. It appears to be the constructor's imprint of the F. Niemann & Co. Paving Company.
Freddie: The tyranny of the corporation is expressed here in stark contrast the individualistic and free form works seen previously. It is imprinted, as if from a mold. A cold, calculating mold, with none of the rocking, none of the implied testicular fortitude, and none of the royalty.
Max: I must disagree! This is a paean to the working man! F. Niemann
AND CO. At last, Labor is recognized in their own works, achieving both ownership of their fruits through the municipality and the dissemination of their name, while empowering the community by providing such a rich canvas.
Freddie: No man, it is totally about the corporation man all getting their fingers on everything man fuck the Man! Down with The Man!
Max: Perhaps there is some inherent complexity were are overlooking?
Freddie: NO man where are the molotovs i'm going to start a RIOOOTTTT!
Max: Please, good sir, violence is not the answer! Because seriously, who would win in a fight between King Lizard or Killler Mack?
Freddie: I dare not fathom this battle of such titans. I can tell you who would lose-- and the answer is: Mankind.
Max: I have a better answer: "Your Mom."
