There’s an old Steve Martin standup routine that I’m about to murder (murder and paraphrase should really be synonyms-“I’m gonna paraphrase the guy!”) when he was in Europe (“where they have a different word for everyone of ours”) and was standing in front of a historic cathedral and feeling in awe of its majesty, and as he was spray-painting his name on the wall he thought ...

I had a somewhat similar experience in Lisbon, Portugal recently staring, slack-jawed, trembling, and nearly hyper-ventilating (not that I have any idea what that means) in front of a Rembrandt portrait of an old man (he was young when he painted it). Rembrandt, I know, it’s like being asked, hey who’s your favorite writer, and answering Shakespeare. But c’mon they are both kinda good. The painting was pretty simple, funny, great art is, um is. Like, I said it’s a portrait of an old man, and I don’t have to go into any more detail. It was, a word you might have noticed I love to use, a word that can be, or has come to be (and this might be one of the reasons I love to use it) really obnoxious, strangely, because it’s not at all, but people take it so, they seem almost hurt by it, or afraid to be hurt by it, beautiful.

Beautiful.

I might even have whispered it to myself. Who else would I have whispered it to. I was alone in front of the painting. Almost, I think alone in that wing of the museum. I have a friend, someone I spent that night in jail with from a previous blog, who is now one of the biggest artists in the world, who takes advantage of alone-times in museums by sneaking his own work in and hanging them on the walls. Sometimes the museums keep them.

So I guess I understand sorta, why as I was feeling my breath heave and my chest spray out like there was wind hitting a sail (there I go again with these dumb-ass metaphors) at this beautiful picture of an old man painted by a young visionary artist, I was slightly distracted by hearing the sound of running hard shoes smacking the typical museum flooring and coming progressively closer to me like radio sound fx. I was hearing somebody else breathing too, huffing and puffing. Finally, pulling around the corner, a guard came flying in and stopped as soon as he was sure he could see me, and could jump me if I decided to do anything rash; like cry.

I know there’s been news about people messing with works of art in museums, someone made an impression recently with a fist to an impressionist masterwork. I can’t really imagine the morning of such an incident, hey dude, wha d’ya feel like doing/I dunno, what d’ya feel like doing/I dunno/Hey, you wanna go punch a Renoir?

Anyways, I have a suggestion for an alternate activity. Three words: cream pie Rumsfeld.