for 18 October 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Polly --

While Australia may have been on the leading edge of ABBA-mania umpteen years ago (I'm not even going to guess how long ago it was), I have discovered the lost tribe of Abba fans.

My husband and I went to Easter Island (y'know the land of the big heads) for the New Year. Little I-stayed-there-a-week-just-long-enough -to-pick-up-a-couple-boring-factoids-info:

1. Easter Island (Rapa Nui as it is known in the native language) is the most remote continuously inhabited island on the face of the planet. It's out there.

2. Even with increased air traffic to the island (thanks to the US government extending the landing strip to accommodate an emergency Shuttle landing) there are only about two flights a week there. Those flights bring everything they need for their survival (almost nothing is raised commercially on the island, cows mostly)

3. There are two (I think) radio stations on the island. They both play almost exclusively Abba songs. The playlist is something along these lines: Namelesstechnodancetune; Super Trooper; 80s ballad I didn't remember but my husband did; Mama Mia; Money, Money; Remixoffirstnamelessdancetune; 3 Abba songs in a row...you get the picture.

4. Everyone, everywhere, all the time plays Abba on their cassettes, cd players, it's ambient music in every restaurant. I tried to get one young tour guide (who had just popped his Abba tape into the stereo) to explain the Abba thing to me. His response, "I have many rememberings when I listen to Abba."

At another point, we were talking to someone who lived there and, you guessed it, another Abba song came on the radio. At this point, we were completely Abba punch drunk and started giggling. "What is the deal with Abba?" we asked. "Oh, that's not Abba," he replied. "That's the A*Teens." The A*Teens are teenage Swedes who sing ONLY Abba songs and sound exactly like them. http://www.a-teens.com/

Needless to say, when we got back to Santiago, I marched to the nearest record store, joined the queue of teens and bought my own copy. Now, whenever I want to have many rememberings of the most remote (continuously inhabited) place on the face of the earth, I play my A*Teens.

And because you started the Abba ball rolling — there is an Abba musical out now, Mama Mia!, scored by Bjorn and Benny. I think it's only in London now, but it's coming to the U.S. soon. http://www.mamma-mia.com/ Trust me, it's worth it.

Longtime Suck reader (Wednesdays only),

Kathleen Kotcher
<shocked@ibm.net>

Wow. It's very difficult to understand why the most remote continuously inhabited place on the earth would choose ABBA as its continuous soundtrack — that just seems dangerous to the citizenry's mental health.

But speaking of rememberings, I have many rememberings when I listen to ABBA, too. Most of my rememberings are of a seldom-known sport called "Couchabatics", invented by my sister Laura and I. Imagine, if you will, an eclectic variation on the balance beam — but in this case the apparatus was lower than the standard height, and covered in a friendly maroon corduroy. Regulations required that each routine be set to a different ABBA tune, "The Winner Takes It All" and "Andante, Andante" being the most popular and crowd-pleasing Couchabatics choices. Points were deducted for stumbling, giggling, getting bored, or just showing a general lack of overdramatic flourishes befitting such overdramatic songs. Singing along in flat soprano did not, however, constitute a major point deduction.

Seriously fucking dorky, and without the excuse of living in the most remote continuously inhabited place on earth,

Polly

Polly,

As a long time reader (since approx. 1995 — Hell, I even have one of the 'original' t-shirts) I just thought that I would drop you a quick note to tell you that, I, about four months ago converted my girlfriend into a Suck.com faithful (I think Frictionary II cemented it).

Shortly afterwards, we, have stopped calling Wednesday by its calendar name and have replaced it with "Filler." So, the days of the week are now Monday, Tuesday, Filler, Thursday, Friday.

So, there you go.

Have a day.

Brad Bauer
<b_bauer@swbell.net>

You know, Filler has always been my favorite day of the week for some weird reason — I guess because Filler is all about anticipation. On Filler, you anticipate Thursday, because on Thursday you anticipate Friday, and on Friday you anticipate the end of the day. Strangely enough, the joy in the anticipation diminishes as the actual weekend approaches.

Or maybe that's just me. At any rate, calling Filler "hump day" really just generally depresses most people, since most people don't get laid nearly enough, and that name just reminds them of that fact.

And for the nihilist, "Filler" really says it all, doesn't it?

I love my funny name, except when it's associated with nationally televised dance parties,

Polly

Hey — I can't think of anyone else to ask this — I'm in love with a woman who's marrying some dork next year. Any tips on how to break up an engagement?

Mr. Sleazy

You're lucky I didn't publish your email address, buddy boy. Don't run around breaking up engagements unless you want the karma gods to fuck you up real good. I'm sure the dork has something going for him if your lover girl is all set to marry him. On the other hand, if she just wants to get married real bad, like so many of those poor Rules girls we see swarming around these days, and she's ready to marry the first dork who proposes, well, then, that means she's sort of a loser. But that also means that she'll entertain the notion of marrying you, too, since a. marrying is the goal and b. she's sort of a loser. Why not propose?

Oh, you don't want to propose? You're not sure you want to marry her, you're just in love with her? The truth is, you don't know her that well?

Well then, why the fuck are you messing with her life, loser boy?

You sound like one of these guys who decides he's in love with some unattainable perky girl because she doesn't appear to be anything like the "psychobitches" he's dated. Newsflash: Um, that's because you're friends. Being friends with a woman is nothing like dating her, dippy. The dork fiance knows she's a psychobitch, but he can handle it. He loves her anyway. She appreciates that, and she loves him despite the fact that he's a huge dork.

You? She chuckles when she thinks of you. You hardly know her, and she knows it. You make her laugh.

Or maybe I've got the whole thing completely wrong.

Full of unsafe, unsound assumptions,

Psychobitch Polly

Dear Polly,

Veronica Squirrel is right about the wannabe nature of this Wide Brown Land. We're prone to feel that the truer, realer, richer world is elsewhere. We used to ask visiting celebrities "What do you think of Australia" almost before they've got off the plane. Occasionally they'd come back with a line like "You have lovely roofs" but on the whole this anxiety isn't good for much.

You've cured it. You lived here. This was our purpose: to nurture you for six months. No country could want more than that. Since last week's Filler the nation has celebrated with spontaneous outbursts of shrine-building. Stained glass renditions of Terry Colon are something to see. The fake relic industry is booming.

What was extra spooky was the Abba insight. The night before Filler I'd been talking with my friend Bunbury, who'd interviewed Bjorn Again in London. They're about to tour here again; their posters already bedeck the streets of Brunswick. An Abba tribute band tour on its way AND we've been consecrated by your presence.

I'm living in a golden age.

Devotedly,

Colin Smith
<colin_smith@hotmail.com>

Oh, my presence hardly constitutes a consecration, I assure you, even to those who spend their time anxiously awaiting an ABBA tribute band tour. Still, your letter made me feel sort of like a heavily-courted character in a Jane Austen novel, but without the glowing complexion, tasty gowns, and substantial grounds, and with a few more headaches, smelly socks, and lint tumbleweeds. Extra spooky indeed.

Still, I do look upon myself as both quite prosperous and quite indulged.

I shall press you no more.

Polly

Polly,

I thought you might enjoy the following article, based on your past experiences with tetris. Scientists making people with amnesia play tetris and recording their dreams. Anyways, you probably saw it in the news.

Mike Montemerlo
<mmde@cs.cmu.edu>

Wow. Maybe I can pretend to have amnesia and get paid to play Tetris all day. I've found my calling!

You know, I don't allow myself to put games on my computer at all, since it would ensure instant unemployment, and therefore I've only played Tetris something like 8 times, total. Yet my love is as strong as can possibly be imagined. Again, picture the Jane Austen character, swooning in the absence of her love object, except replace Mr. Darcy with a video game that gives people with amnesia horrible nightmares. Also, add more cold pizza, and some bad split ends.

With a most deplorable want of Tetris, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health,

Polly

Dear Mr. S.,

Kudos on your critique of the cow phenomenon. However, I can't believe you didn't mention David Lynch's submission of a blood-soaked, fork-impaled cow for the New York City debut, and it's subsequent rejection.

Seems to me this dovetails quite nicely with the inability of just plain folks to stomach "difficult" art, no matter how bovinified. Keep fighting the good fight.

Akio Stribling
<akio1@my-deja.com>

Akio-Breakio,

I had mentioned the art-cow contribution of the director of The Straight Story, but my editor cut it. I called Lynch's art cow a steakhouse nightmare and very eloquently described what happened to it. You could acutely feel in my prose the loss our culture experienced when the Lynch art cow was vanished by the public-art powers-that-be. You would've wept for that loss, the way it was evoked by yours truly.

Looking back, I realize my editor was 100% right to chop that out with his savage and blunt axe. After all, who are we to try to compete with the New Yorker, who covered the story in their always hilarious and incisive "Talk of the Town" column around the time the Lynch art cow was removed? Now you provide this link, proving that info about the anti-Lynch censorship is pretty much everywhere.

You're absolutely right, A. S. If a headless cow with a fork up its ass is too much for our kids, then they're just plain wimps. You know what I think the problem is? That Harry Potter. When I was a kid we had Roald Dahl, we were scared shitless, and we liked it. Banning Lynch shows that civic paternalism has once again gone too far. Only happy cows from now on, no matter what.

Slotcar H.

Wow — great piece! As a composer who writes ugly avant-garde music that no one wants to hear, I especially appreciated the Adorno reference and Terry's tribute to Marcel Duchamp. And perhaps this is a related art phenomenon: I live in Frisco, TX which has the dubious distinction of being the "fastest growing city in the country". They recently wiped out an entire prairie to build a huge shopping mall here. After building the shopping mall, they decorated the parking lot with sculptures of all of the animals that used to live in the prairie before it was paved over (steers, jackrabbits, foxes etc.)! Isn't that sick?

Elizabeth Hinkle
<ehinkle@unt.edu>

It's like the airport here in Boston. The walkways to the new parking garage over the Bay feature exquisite mosaics of the sea life that was there before they paved over the fish and put up the parking lot.

No matter what happens to our wildlife, E., it must be comforting to be the leading composer of "ugly avant-garde music" in Frisco, Texas. Get the Knitting factory to open a franchise there and you'll be all set. Maybe Columbia or Princeton will set up a sound lab and start putting out albums. All I'm trying to say, EHT, is this: Get out before they lynch you!

Worried about your future,

Slotcar H.

Loved your article. The main question for me, though, is why anybody gives a damn about a bunch of cutesy fiberglass sculptures. But if I start asking that, I might be led into the heart of darkness that is eBay. In any case, as a former New Orleanian, I thought fish was an odd choice for that city. Mammals, though, are out. Opossums and armadillos are almost non-existent. The only four-legged candidates are nutria and rats; I'm all for nutria, but obviously a lot of people wouldn't be. Still, why New Orleans passed up the most obvious of all, the crawfish, is beyond me. Maybe for once they were trying to avoid a cliche.

Rob Peneguy
<peneguy@tryc4.com>

As a former resident of the Crescent City myself (921 Elysian Fields Avenue, if it hasn't burned down yet or been completely overrun by salamanders), I always thought that the most charming thing about New Orleans was its unapologetic embrace of every cliche in the book. That and the fact that the bars are open 24 hours. And that you can buy fireworks at the gas station. And ammunition.

I also liked the Wal-Mart in Algiers a lot. It was my first one. There's nothing like a Santa ringing a bell in front of a Wal-Mart in December in 85-degree humidity to remind you what Christmas is all about. That reminds me: Next year, dress the bums up as Santas, cover 'em in paint, and — voila! — Art Santas! I bet the Salvation Army will make more money with a Bucket of Blood-esque project like that than with their usual apathetic bell-ringing.

Can't imagine why they didn't choose the nutria or their beloved alligators or shrimp. Art shrimp sounds a little unpleasant, though. Like you could get food poisoning just by looking at it.

Slotcar H.

Hey, why not call fiberglass cows, in various poses, "art"? If you can stick a crucifix in a jar of urine, or photograph a male with the handle of a bullwhip inserted in his rectum, or attach elephant dung to an icon, and not only call them art but also receive public subsidies while doing it, then cows, fish, and cartoon characters are also fair game. Unfortunately, pretentious snots have a harder time calling the work "brilliant".

In fact, I predict that, soon, artists will receive subsidies to not produce public art, much like our fabled farmers now receive subsidies not to raise beloved cows. And what a better world it will be.

Paul E. Clark
<paul@ccnlegal.com>

For years, I've been predicting that artists, writers, and filmmakers would be paid by the government not to produce work, just like farmers are paid not to grow food. Or that they'd be paid to make their work, but would then be forced to store it in a silo unshown or unread. But now I see I was a little off in my prediction. The Internet is that silo.

I'm not sure that the artists to whose work you refer received any public subsidies to make it. The elephant dung guy had his work shown in a city museum, but that's not quite the same thing. But whether you like those guys or not, there is a distinction between art that is actually trying to do something as art and stuff like the art cows, which is solely a form of entertainment. And it's not even good entertainment. Conversely, whether Mapplethorpe, et al, created successful art or not, at least they made good entertainment! The art cows lose on both counts.

Pretentious snots may be loathe to describe the art cows as brilliant, but regular folks, it seems, aren't. The coffee table books produced to make even more money from these cash cows include a lot of encomiums to the genius-level work that is achievable in painted fiberglass cow-form. It would be a better world, you're right, sans crappy public art, but hostility to lousiness isn't the same as sanctioning the cartoon-characterization of the entire visual world. I like Daffy Duck on the screen. On a necktie I could live without him. In a plaza in front of a city building he loses all his charm and makes me not want to see him in his cartoons anymore, whether they're brilliant or not.

Thanks for writing in.

Slotcar H.

I live in New York, and I didn't even notice the cows were gone.

I know a few people with a seething hatred for the cows that I just can't figure out. Who cares? They're not permanent. They won't be staring at me day after day like the horribly drab NYU dorms popping up all over the place or the ceaseless construction (which happens to be on an NYU dorm in the lot the Palladium once graced) across the street from my apartment. They don't disrupt the landscape as much as the occasional hordes of Giuliani's blue-clad foot soldiers in Tompkins Square Park do.

The cows were amusing to me. Then they dropped below my radar and I stopped seeing them. Trust me, we don't need cows to shield the homeless from us; most New Yorkers can't see them anyway.

I appreciate your disgust for kitsch, puns, and innocuous fun, but the whole world doesn't agree with you, and they deserve to have cows if they want them. No one's stopping you from going to the Guggenheim or the Whitey, er, Whitney to enjoy the art you appreciate or protesting against the strenuously trendy art theatre to which you go to be entertained. Is corporate art for the masses that dangerous? Isn't there more obvious advertising all over the same areas the cows are? It's possible that more people than you think understand what the cows are about, they just don't see the big deal that you see.

But what do I know? I don't think all art has to disturb, or be transcendent. Drawing the lines between art, craft, and decoration is a task I don't want, as I can't imagine I'm enough of a black-and-white moralist to decide where those lines go. Do you want the job?

Thanks for a thought-provoking article. No matter what the subject is, I always get sucked into your essays.

Alexia Henke
<alexia_henke@exchangeny.deutschinc.com>

You must not read the paper or watch TV, either. The removal of the cows was, for some reason, big news. Anyway, Guiliani's foot soldiers march alongside the parade of cows. One announces the arrival of the other. It's all the same in all our newly safe cities.

Whether most New Yorkers have stopped seeing the homeless and whether some stopped seeing the cows (what do they see? window displays?) isn't the point. You can ignore the cows into oblivion, but go to the next city down the line and there they'll be again, waiting for you. How many times will that have to happen before you admit that they suck?

The whole world may not agree with me, but I'm not sure that means they deserve lousy, unavoidable public art. Nothing's too good for the people, as a Chicago ward heeler once said in the days when public art meant a soldier on a horse.

How did you guess that as my principal form of entertainment I haunt the dark cavern that is the Performing Garage? And as for the job offer, how much does it pay?

Thanks for writing in. I hope you keep reading.

Slotcar H.

SH —

Loved it. Of course, out here in the Great Merrikan West, kow worship has been institutionalized for 125 years and the level of collective cud-chewing, complacent and distinctly uncritical acceptance is frightening.

You see, the Kattle Kulture was promoted by the government in the second half of the 19th century as an excellent means of getting white folks to occupy huge swaths of land and put it to "beneficial use" where rainfall was far too sparse for even the most optimistic of farmers (this was before centrifugal pumps and the era of huge federally-funded dams, mind you). By the turn of the last century, much of the semiarid western half of the US had been overgrazed to desert-like conditions. As the tumbleweeds rolled where grass once grew, unhappy Kattle Barons began a long, proud and stunningly effective tradition of proud individualism and self-reliance: they applied for government assistance.

Now, as the business of raising fat and sassy beeves on stunted, abused pasture -- even with the generous subsidies, tax breaks and other largesse -- is becoming practicable only by telecommuters, VC bull-marketers and multinational corporations, many of the increasingly urban-dwelling Westerners are eyeing the public rangeland as something other than pasture and bovine bathroom. But everywhere you turn, there are symbols of the glorious herds: 75-foot plaster longhorn replicas decorating tourist-trap freeway exit restaurants, innumerable icons of civic pride such as lariats and ten-gallon hats emblazoned on official letterhead, and whole cities shutting down for part of a week because the rodeo's on.

Whimsical, cartoonish milk faucets aren't really as much of the urban landscape in a land where the critters are unabashedly being grown in order to off 'em and harvest their flesh. Kattle Kitsch in Kattle Kountry is markedly macho, typified by angry, arching steers, glowering or imminently charging bulls, branding irons and juicy steaks. Far from a Picowsso telling the tourons where to aim the viewfinder, in the land of sirloin and bullshit the most sacred cow is the one rented by the multimillionaire land speculator to qualify his next stucco monument to suburban sprawl as agricultural property subject to minimal state taxes while he gets the glossy sales brochures printed up.

Phil Stevens
<mudshark@euphoria.org>

Wow, that's a mouthful of prime chuck, and I don't think I can chew it without a little more Dentu-Grip. It occurs to me that you should've written the article!

Traveling through South Dakota once, I marveled at the fierce plastic steers in mid snort that threatened to stampede off their pedestals at every motel and tractor dealership I passed. I knew the cows were a stand-in for an agrarian past harried city dwellers often long for. Thanks for reminding them their bucolic dreams are for naught.

Slotcar H.

What is your beef with the art cows? When I was in New York a couple of months ago they seemed clever enough, and between the urine smell, the crime scene tape, and blood stains the city could use some Disneyfication. Besides, where is it written that every single artistic endeavor must be a searing red hot poker into the human condition? Isn't it the relative banality of Hamburger Helper that gives (some spicy fancy food) its evolved appeal? Without Wal-mart fashion sense who would hipsters be condescending to?

Warming up my art grill,

Clay
<clayn@fractalcrayons.com>

Clay, I worry that a man with the word "crayons" in his domain name might be the kind of guy who'd be all too comfortable with the description "child-like." If your idea of clever is a cow painted to look like a waiter or a Picasso, I think your fractals might be bunching up. I don't know what part of NYC you were in a couple of months ago, but that smell wasn't urine, it was Gap perfume. If you visited Times Square, I can't imagine you'd think New York actually needs more Disneyfication. It's not necessary that every work of art be imbued with heavyosity, but let's be grownup and face it: the art cows are failed whimsy. Is there a genre sadder? And as far as the fashion sense of hipsters goes, it goes as far as Wal-Mart. If you're proposing that the artistic equivalent of Hamburger Helper be installed in public, I'd hate to see your kitchen.

Thanks for reading and writing in.

Slotcar H.

Dearest Slotcar:

How this escaped your attention, I won't presume to guess.

You will be interested to know, this cow-ntroversey was played out in classic Animal House form at Northwestern University earlier this year when one of these cows came to graze on campus and was promptly (and some say, mercifully) stolen. Much bovine bellowing and nattering ensued.

Here are references to the relevant bits of The Daily Northwestern for your perusal, should you wish to retrace the "bovine tragedy":

Daily Northwestern Articles:

April 26 NU has a cow

May 16 Cow sawed off at the hoof and carted off

May 22 $500 reward offered

May 26 Dismembered cow found in Fiji fraternity house. Court orders students to pay to replace it

Yours in suckitude,

Colette
<cdm@northwestern.edu>

Although I endeavor to keep up with all anti-art-cow activity, I'm just one man. I can't do it alone. I rely on people like you to alert me to the latest manifestations of whimsical graffitti, kooky college pranks and general defacement. The headlines "Dismembered cow found in Fiji fraternity house"; "Carlton endorses stealing, destruction of property"; "Moo@NU theft far from activism, not 'damn funny'"; and "University campus shouldn't be 'a graveyard for pop art'" piqued my interest, and will be excellent source material should I ever decide to write a book on college students' reactions to inadequately secured public art.

Thanks for the heads up and keep reading!

Slotcar H.

The Shit

Krushchev Remembers, by Nikita Krushchev (authorship disputed), translated by Strobe Talbott

Five-Star Day Cafe Athens, Ga.

Salon's "Action Figures" TV ad

Donna's Famous "Long and Short of It," by Donna Anderson and friends

Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman (The Anchor Bay/Universal letterboxed edition)

George Bush, Dark Prince of Love: A Presidential Romance, by Lydia Millet (Scribner)

King Kong: The Complete 1933 Film Score, by Max Steiner Moscow Symphony Orchestra, William J. Stromberg conductor (Marco Polo)

Eightball #20, by Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics Books)

The ECW's Little Spike Dudley

Stan Kenton, City of Glass, featuring arrangements by legendary weirdo Bob Graettinger (EMD/Blue Note)

Comix 2000, Edited and published by L'Association, 2000

Star Dudes

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.