Art Appreciation
A couple weekends ago, I had the opportunity to ride with the excitable crew of Rockin Robbie Billz, Maniacal Mike Matthews and Trevor up to Nashville for Galaxycon. I never miss the chance to show up for these pop culture conventions so long as I know Billy Zane isn’t going to be present. I was especially eager to meet a childhood hero of mine, Dr. Peter Weller. You may remember him from roles such as Buckaroo Banzai and Robocop, or if you’re one of those literary arthouse types, you’ll recall him playing Bill Lee in that popular children’s flick, Naked Lunch.
Of course, being an incredibly learned man by any Polish metric, I know Dr. Peter Weller for his scholarly pursuits. Mostly, watching documentaries on Renaissance painters with one eye open, two o’clock in the morning, and there’s Dr. Weller, offering his two cents about Jan Van Eyck, leaving me wondering, what the fuck does Buckaroo Banzai know about Flemish painters? He knows a lot, come to find out. Peter Weller received his doctorate in Italian Renaissance art history. He wrote and published his dissertation on everybody’s favorite fifteenth century humanist, Leon Battista Alberti, author of De Pictura, the first modern study of painting. The book argues that it wasn’t his limited time in Florence that influenced Alberti’s view of painting, so much as it was his earlier years in exile going to university in Padua, coupled with his extensive travels to Bologna, Rome, and northern Europe, that opened his eyes to the importance of the study of art.
Apparently, this is a controversial view to harbor. I don’t know. I was pretty easily convinced, though, it should be noted, my knowledge of the Italian Renaissance is limited to a couple art appreciation community college courses and a couple seasons of that Medici series that came out about ten years ago. It’s another one of those series where Sean Bean gets killed off violently.
So, Peter Weller is 78 years old as I write this. I overheard a couple passing idiots, one of them dressed like a Japanese girl, that Peter Weller was looking… old. I thought he was in fine form. I mean, he’d always been gaunt, right? It’s not like he had bulging muscles under that Robocop armor. Nowadays, he and Ed Harris could actually pass as twins.
A glance at the copyright page of the Alberti book shows it was published last year. I happen to mention this fact to my eighty-year-old, live-in, father-in-law, Milt.
Milt glanced at me from where he sat in a near fugue on his catnapper.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, that book had over a thousand goddam footnotes.”
“So?”
“So, he’s only a couple years younger than you.”
“So?”
“So, I think you oughta be able to fucking switch between streaming and your regular television now and again, without interrupting me and what I’m doing to help you out.”
“Well, I hit the buttons.”
“A thousand footnotes, Milt. I just need you to keep two remote buttons straight in your head.”
I suppose it could be said that Dr. Weller actually wrote his dissertation twelve years before, but, dammit, Milt really needs to learn what the hell he’s doing, and if I got to shame him to get his head in the game…
Anyway, meeting Peter Weller was definitely the highlight of the day, which is saying something considering I also got to meet Cassandra Peterson. Elvira. Apparently, she’s hanging up her fright wig after this cycle of conventions, so it was imperative I meet her and get her signature on some collectibles.
One thing I can tell you about Cassandra Peterson. Her lesbianism is no joke. She was not swayed one little bit by the proximity of the Polish Hammer. Still, her magnetism was such that I agreed to accompany young Trevor to Elvira’s panel. During the question-and-answer segment, Trevor hopped up immediately to get in line at the microphone. He’d apparently adored her most of his life, and his one chance at asking her a question, he asked what her favorite recipe out of her cookbook was. I considered the question borderline sexist, but the audience received it well and Ms. Peterson answered with the green bean casserole, which told me everything I needed to know about that cookbook. Not to be outdone, I got in line behind Trevor and asked her the question that had been haunting me most of the day.
“Hey, Cassandra, Polish Hammer here. I was just wondering, would it have killed you to show a little cleavage today?”
Really, her demure blouse rode up so high it was practically a turtleneck. Also, I might have been a little chafed to have spent two hundred dollars on her signed bio and an autograph on a NECA figure only for her to sign the book to: The Hammer. Which we all know could mean ANYBODY. There’s a Laotian Hammer running around the nail salon in the Guntersville Wal-Mart. She could have been signing it to him for all anybody knows.
I got booed out of the auditorium with that.
Peter Weller was a bit happier to see me, especially once he noticed I carried his book in my hand. Of all the conventions he’d done in the last year, I was the first jackass to come bearing his book. Not surprising considering it was basically a hundred-dollar textbook centered on an incredibly obscure Italian scholar. And it toted over a thousand footnotes…
I could tell he rarely signed his book. Here was a man who charged extra to jot down quotes on his signed 8X10s, taking the time to write out an entire paragraph, wishing me well, and basically calling me a prince among men. Which I am. To most nonlesbians.
He also gave me two free signed 8x10s with quotes and signed my Robocop toy.
Honestly, if someone brought my book to sign, I’d probably do the same and give them a nice crisp twenty-dollar bill for their time and effort.
As it stood, we chatted on the subject of Italian Renaissance paintings for a moment before I got the opportunity to veer the conversation into an arena I was more comfortable inhabiting.
“You know who’s paintings I can’t stand, Dr. Weller? Billy Zane’s.”
“I’m not familiar with his work.”
“Oh, it’s awful. He’s calls it abstract, but I think that’s because he lacks the talent to do anything more with the paint than to smear and dab the oils on a canvas in a lifeless, artless array.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”
I’m positive he was referring to the jag off a couple people ahead of me in line. He brought a canvas he’d painted himself of Robocop inexplicably side-by-side with Yoda. The whole thing looked as though it had been fingerpainted by a cretin with severely limited motor skills. It would have been unacceptable to hang on Mommy’s refrigerator had the artist been ten years old. This cat presenting the canvas to Dr. Weller looked at least four times that age. He insisted Peter Weller hold the canvas up for a selfie with the artist. And Peter Weller, celebrated art historian who’d gazed upon the original works of some of the best artists in the history of humanity, held this fucking canvas and grinned like a masturbating spider monkey.
It made me honestly want to go back and apologize to Cassandra Peterson for feeling shortchanged by her manner of dress, but apparently I was no longer allowed back on her side of the convention hall.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
