Thursday, May 13, 2004
Basquiat is in danger!
If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then surely graffiti must be the world's oldest pasttime. How old is anyone's guess, but I'd be willing to say "really darn." Given our extremely limited grasp of Magdalenian culture, it is impossible to say whether or not there were roving gangs of hominin youths dropping their "tags" amidst someone's expert mammoth portraits. Honestly, how do we know some of the scrawlings at Altamira aren't caveman-ese for "Cro-Mag Ruff Rydaz: #1 In Da Hood"? We don't. Even if you don't believe that, definitive graffiti is known from the time of the Pyramids and yet earlier in the Near East. The remains of ancient Egypt are rife with graffiti, both preserving the hieroglyphic musings of bored laborers as well as documenting a vast array of invading peoples who felt the need to "leave their mark", from early Semitic and Nubian campaigns, to the Arabs, to modern Europeans (with corresponding tags, from the ever-popular "Hyksos do it five dynasties a millennium" to "BMNH Ruff Rydaz: #1 In Ye Olde Hoode.") Many an aesthete has decried such defacement, although in some cases it provides vital information on the timing of certain historical events. Such decrying is not without its merit, however--there is a rightful onus and illegality associated with graffiti that befits its status as a destructive art. It's one thing when you make crappy art on some poor canvas in the comfort of your own home, but when your crappy art damages someone else's good art, that there is a crime. Also, as Hammerman pointed out, there's always the chance that it will turn into a giant scribble-monster intent on destroying your inner city Neighborhood Club.
Limited in worth as art though it may be, graffiti is invaluable as a source of sociological data. Look no further if you want the real views of the man on the street. Or, as is often the case, the man on the seat. Yes, those of gentle constitutions should best leave now, as the rest of this post is headed straight down the toilet. Obeying the call of nature gives one rare time to ponder, and those with a radical streak may translate such ponderings into graphical form. Even those without such radicalism may, secure in the privacy of the environment, take the time to dole out their two cents to the bathroom-going public. After all, the words of the prophets are written on the restroom walls, tenement stalls. Obviously, most of this is worthless, consisting of (literal and figurative) bathroom humor. But there are always a few diamonds in the rough to be discovered, especially when the minds behind them are the collective student body of the U of C. In the spirit of recognizing these anonymous scribes, collecting the best campus restroom graffiti was made one of the items (#80, to be precise) on this year's ScavHunt list (Judge Steve and I hit on this idea independently, and both our wordings were combined in the final item.) My contribution focused on a single hotbed of great restroom graffiti, the third floor men's room of the Reg. In between the tiles of this noble hall are years upon years worth of writing, all on a single theme: grout puns. Here can be found legions of cemented variations on the words "great" or "out", all under the proud banner of "Keep up the grout work!" They range from the witty-but-obvious likes of "Grout Expectations" to the inspired, symbiotic brilliance of the all-time winner, "Grout, Grout, let it all out" to which some wag appended, "These are the things we can do with grout!" I get shivers just considering its genius.
I'd like to take a moment to use this campus peculiarity to address an issue of some importance around these parts: expansion of the College. Few concepts are more controversial (and reviled among my circles.) At this point, I think it has been determined that expansion of the College is the source of original sin on Earth. "Curse that expansion of the College! Things were different back in my day, I'll tell you what!" Of course, it's the nature of any group of people to say that their heyday was better than the heyday being enjoyed by the current generation. I'm sure that when I was a first-year (back in the autumn of '99, whoa-oh-oh!), the old-timers were croaking about how all these dull young whippersnappers wouldn't know a modus tollens if it bit 'em in the rear. And when they were first-years, that senior class whined about how their alma mater was headed to Hell in a handbasket. And so on and so forth, until any objectivity gets lost in an infinite nostalgia regression. That said, things were soooo much better back in my day. Dagnabbit, I was in one of many Western Civ sections, took the totally awesome BIO 170s sequence, double-concentrated, played on the Mickey Mouse sculpture outside of Woodward, and the quads were paved with gold! Gold, I tell you, gold! Seriously, though, there were tennis courts on the quads. It was great. Lunchtime bull sessions were like the frickin' Algonquin Round Table, people. Things really have gone downhill, and I can prove it, thanks to the grout work! These priceless stall manuscripts document a progression of wit from before my time here up until the present day, and through a combination of ink-fadiography and personal experience, each entry can be fairly precisely dated. This affords a rare opportunity to examine the intellectual decline of the College over time.
We begin with such early paragons of wit as "Much Ado Agrout Nothing", "Beyond shadow of a grout", "The Groutful Guest", and "Grout Balls of Fire", and wry, pop-cultural jibes along the lines of "Kiss my grouts", "Grouty to the max!", and the first appearance of "Groutcho Marx." This period also saw grout as written in IPA and "From the groutside looking in" written backwards, so as to heighten the effect. Following this, we have still serviceably punny but rather less enjoyable entries as "The Grout Race", "The Grout Outdoors", and "I'm groutta here!", with occasional highlights like "God: a Being which none grouter can be conceived: the Groutological Argument: Praise be to the Grout Lord, a Being Whose existence cannot be grouted." It pains me to even mention this year's entries, but they're necessary for the sake of argument. Let's take a look at the recent additions to the wall, shall we? Well, there's the utterly lowbrow "I need a grout big cock", "Move bitch, grout the way", and "I'll grout yo mama", the pitifully pseudointellectual "I grout therefore I grout" (???), and the just plain awful "When Harry Met Grout." Come on, that last one isn't even a pun, it's just stupid. There you have it, folks, proof of the decline of the College. There are rays of hope, however. When some irate mason (?), tired of the whole game, wrote "Hey Idiots--Grout is the stuff between floor tiles. This sh*t is mortar", the community responded with, "*Gasp* We're all mortarfied!", "Well, the mortar merrier!" So while the capacity for great punnery is still present, I'd argue that the mean wit has fallen (which is the heart of the argument against expansion), or, in the words of one wilier than I, things have gone "From latent to blatently grout."
If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then surely graffiti must be the world's oldest pasttime. How old is anyone's guess, but I'd be willing to say "really darn." Given our extremely limited grasp of Magdalenian culture, it is impossible to say whether or not there were roving gangs of hominin youths dropping their "tags" amidst someone's expert mammoth portraits. Honestly, how do we know some of the scrawlings at Altamira aren't caveman-ese for "Cro-Mag Ruff Rydaz: #1 In Da Hood"? We don't. Even if you don't believe that, definitive graffiti is known from the time of the Pyramids and yet earlier in the Near East. The remains of ancient Egypt are rife with graffiti, both preserving the hieroglyphic musings of bored laborers as well as documenting a vast array of invading peoples who felt the need to "leave their mark", from early Semitic and Nubian campaigns, to the Arabs, to modern Europeans (with corresponding tags, from the ever-popular "Hyksos do it five dynasties a millennium" to "BMNH Ruff Rydaz: #1 In Ye Olde Hoode.") Many an aesthete has decried such defacement, although in some cases it provides vital information on the timing of certain historical events. Such decrying is not without its merit, however--there is a rightful onus and illegality associated with graffiti that befits its status as a destructive art. It's one thing when you make crappy art on some poor canvas in the comfort of your own home, but when your crappy art damages someone else's good art, that there is a crime. Also, as Hammerman pointed out, there's always the chance that it will turn into a giant scribble-monster intent on destroying your inner city Neighborhood Club.
Limited in worth as art though it may be, graffiti is invaluable as a source of sociological data. Look no further if you want the real views of the man on the street. Or, as is often the case, the man on the seat. Yes, those of gentle constitutions should best leave now, as the rest of this post is headed straight down the toilet. Obeying the call of nature gives one rare time to ponder, and those with a radical streak may translate such ponderings into graphical form. Even those without such radicalism may, secure in the privacy of the environment, take the time to dole out their two cents to the bathroom-going public. After all, the words of the prophets are written on the restroom walls, tenement stalls. Obviously, most of this is worthless, consisting of (literal and figurative) bathroom humor. But there are always a few diamonds in the rough to be discovered, especially when the minds behind them are the collective student body of the U of C. In the spirit of recognizing these anonymous scribes, collecting the best campus restroom graffiti was made one of the items (#80, to be precise) on this year's ScavHunt list (Judge Steve and I hit on this idea independently, and both our wordings were combined in the final item.) My contribution focused on a single hotbed of great restroom graffiti, the third floor men's room of the Reg. In between the tiles of this noble hall are years upon years worth of writing, all on a single theme: grout puns. Here can be found legions of cemented variations on the words "great" or "out", all under the proud banner of "Keep up the grout work!" They range from the witty-but-obvious likes of "Grout Expectations" to the inspired, symbiotic brilliance of the all-time winner, "Grout, Grout, let it all out" to which some wag appended, "These are the things we can do with grout!" I get shivers just considering its genius.
I'd like to take a moment to use this campus peculiarity to address an issue of some importance around these parts: expansion of the College. Few concepts are more controversial (and reviled among my circles.) At this point, I think it has been determined that expansion of the College is the source of original sin on Earth. "Curse that expansion of the College! Things were different back in my day, I'll tell you what!" Of course, it's the nature of any group of people to say that their heyday was better than the heyday being enjoyed by the current generation. I'm sure that when I was a first-year (back in the autumn of '99, whoa-oh-oh!), the old-timers were croaking about how all these dull young whippersnappers wouldn't know a modus tollens if it bit 'em in the rear. And when they were first-years, that senior class whined about how their alma mater was headed to Hell in a handbasket. And so on and so forth, until any objectivity gets lost in an infinite nostalgia regression. That said, things were soooo much better back in my day. Dagnabbit, I was in one of many Western Civ sections, took the totally awesome BIO 170s sequence, double-concentrated, played on the Mickey Mouse sculpture outside of Woodward, and the quads were paved with gold! Gold, I tell you, gold! Seriously, though, there were tennis courts on the quads. It was great. Lunchtime bull sessions were like the frickin' Algonquin Round Table, people. Things really have gone downhill, and I can prove it, thanks to the grout work! These priceless stall manuscripts document a progression of wit from before my time here up until the present day, and through a combination of ink-fadiography and personal experience, each entry can be fairly precisely dated. This affords a rare opportunity to examine the intellectual decline of the College over time.
We begin with such early paragons of wit as "Much Ado Agrout Nothing", "Beyond shadow of a grout", "The Groutful Guest", and "Grout Balls of Fire", and wry, pop-cultural jibes along the lines of "Kiss my grouts", "Grouty to the max!", and the first appearance of "Groutcho Marx." This period also saw grout as written in IPA and "From the groutside looking in" written backwards, so as to heighten the effect. Following this, we have still serviceably punny but rather less enjoyable entries as "The Grout Race", "The Grout Outdoors", and "I'm groutta here!", with occasional highlights like "God: a Being which none grouter can be conceived: the Groutological Argument: Praise be to the Grout Lord, a Being Whose existence cannot be grouted." It pains me to even mention this year's entries, but they're necessary for the sake of argument. Let's take a look at the recent additions to the wall, shall we? Well, there's the utterly lowbrow "I need a grout big cock", "Move bitch, grout the way", and "I'll grout yo mama", the pitifully pseudointellectual "I grout therefore I grout" (???), and the just plain awful "When Harry Met Grout." Come on, that last one isn't even a pun, it's just stupid. There you have it, folks, proof of the decline of the College. There are rays of hope, however. When some irate mason (?), tired of the whole game, wrote "Hey Idiots--Grout is the stuff between floor tiles. This sh*t is mortar", the community responded with, "*Gasp* We're all mortarfied!", "Well, the mortar merrier!" So while the capacity for great punnery is still present, I'd argue that the mean wit has fallen (which is the heart of the argument against expansion), or, in the words of one wilier than I, things have gone "From latent to blatently grout."
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