Guanica

This column marks day three of my lawsuit with my neighbor Hamms over Guanica, the masterpiece I painted on his bathroom wall in axle grease, batshit and chicken blood. Before you start freaking out, let me explain that the chicken blood part was an accident, since the guy at the pet store never told me that chickens are stupid enough to run straight into a live fan just because they're excited you put "What a Feeling" from Flashdance on the stereo again.

I'd originally bought the chicken to make sure I wasn't going to get cancer from the grease fumes in Hamms' bathroom while I was painting, sort of like the canary in the coal mine idea, only with a bigger bird. I figured canaries are pussies so I wasn't real worried about canary-killing levels of fumes, but if it was enough to put a chicken down I'd probably have to install some ventilation or invest in some scuba gear or something. "Safety First" has always been my motto. But then I had trouble finding a pet store that carried chickens, turns out those places are lousy with canaries, I guess because of the demand from local coal miners and hungry cats, but you ask for a chicken and those pricks try to sell you a goddamned Lhasa apso or something. Like I'm going to take a dog's word on dangerous gas levels. I've already got a dog that puts out enough gas to drive the dodos into extinction, thanks.

That's when I had the bright idea to just go straight to the source and buy a chicken from KFC. I figure they're swimming in the birds and wouldn't mind cutting me a deal on one, since I'd be saving them the trouble of killing the stupid thing and shaving all the feathers off with a chainsaw or whatever they do in the back before the customers come in. But you know my luck, I get a real "by the book" type behind the counter and end up having to break into KFC at three in the morning, only to find that they must let the chickens out at night, or maybe each of the workers takes a couple home for entertainment, but they sure as hell weren't anywhere in the kitchen or coat closet.

I briefly considered sneaking into work and making off with the commune's own Mazie the chicken, but I didn't want to take a chance on getting roped into one of Red Bagel's lame after-hours adventures, plus I didn't want to risk any confusing voodoo bullshit as a result of stealing a mystical chicken.

Finally I found a pet store that had a chicken, though they only had one because some fast-talking traveling salesman had duped the owner into thinking it was a rare Polynesian dancing bird, and the guy was still pissed off that he'd traded a purebred Shar-Pei for a chicken and a handful of magic beans. I must have made the guy's day when I took the chicken and the beans off his hands, but it was all for a good cause since now I could get back to painting and had some magic beans to sell to Boris Utzov for lunch money this week.

The chicken only lasted about a half an hour in the end, since the fan I'd brought in to push out the grease fumes and Foghat's B.O. didn't come with any warnings about keeping it away from extremely stupid birds. It did do a remarkably efficient chicken-killing job, however, and I've considered trying to sell it to the guys over at KFC once I've determined that they don't have my fingerprints on file. And really, the random spray of chicken gore did nothing but good things for the bathroom wall painting, adding some interesting texture to the smeared grease and caked on batshit already there.

Truth be told, the batshit part was partially an accident as well, since I hadn't realized that leaving Hamms' bathroom window open all the time so I could get in and out was going to mean the place would become infested with bats in no time flat. But it did give me a name for the painting, and I hear guano is good for wallpaper, though I'm not sure where I heard that. Probably from the "cigarette ash is good for your carpet" school of home improvement, something dreamt up by a clever Deadhead who wanted to get out of cleaning up after his stanky ass.

But anyway, the painting turned out great, whatever the department of health or Hamms might think about it. As one local alcoholic art historian has observed, "it's like Picasso's Guernica, without all the crappy parts." Which was cool by me, since I was just trying to finger-paint Lynard Skynard rumbling with a gang of tough nuns. Now the question is just to determine who really owns that bathroom wall: Hamms, whose house it's attached to and surrounded by, or Omar Bricks, who provided the blood, sweat and tears that made it into a work of art that may or may not be dangerous to the public health. The courts will have their say, but I leave the true judgment up to the art fans, who I've been charging $10 a head to use my ladder to get into Hamms' bathroom.

Bricks out.

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