"only an American would make a game where you steal home and win the game"

I was talking to a friend of the beavers' a couple of weeks ago in a bar in chicago about art. it was about 3 in the afternoon and the bar was buzzing about the uncoming baseball strike. my friend and i were swilling down pbr's and he was talking to me about art.

he was wondering when the "new" art movement would come about, and what I thought would be like. i don't know too much about art. i know a little history, and i know the big leaguers, but i don't consider myself literate in that field.

i'm still reflecting on that question weeks later, and i think that art - as far as paintings and what not - has somewhat become obsolete. why would anyone go and see a painting if they could see the movie instead? i wonder if anyone would go to see Renoir's Beach Party if that scene were taken out of a movie.

There's a french movie out now titled "Amelie". which has become quite popular world-wide. Part of that movie focuses on one of the inhabitants of Renoir's Beach Party painting. If Renoir were alive today -and his painting was actually a still frame of that movie (a pause during the DVD) - I don't think anyone would look at it twice.

So getting back to the question: What is art? In a sense, what do people admire? What do people stop to gaze at, and wonder the compleixites of?

Car crashes. Not just the smashed cars themselves, but the cop and ambulance lights as well. I think the emergency lights are what make crashes - especially during the night - so beautiful. At least at a distance.

Moments after a bad car crash in a neighborhood like mine, the cops and their emergency ligths enter the picture. Slowly after that, the drunks enter the picture, followed by the kids. Everything happens in very slow frames. Even from a second story window you can still see the fright and intrique in the faces of the kids. Looking around into other windows you see more people like me.

I don't know if that's what I think art has come to, or even if you could even consider a near-fatal car crash art. It does fit the description though. When was the last time you were at a museum and stared intently at a painting for more then a half hour, and feel as many emotions as watching the aftermath of a terrible car crash?

The beaver's been a bit slow lately. Let's talk about terrible car crashes.