Michelangelo's Magna Doodle Discovered

Magna Doodle drawing determined to have been done by Michelangelo himself may be worth between $12 million and a kajillion dollars, according to students at Art Lowenstein's School of Art Appraisal in Hoboken, NJ. The doodle was unearthed among assorted art-related toys from the Renaissance period in what used to be a child's rumpus room, according to officials at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The unsigned doodle is of a half-man, half-bear — some call it a Manimal — standing on a three-dimensional see-through box, beneath a sky filled with different-sized eyes and concentric triangles, according to officials. The Manimal has a river of snakes flowing somehow magically out of his armpit, and the single word "Gwyneth" is scrawled mysteriously near the border between several squiggles. Experts place the time of the doodling in the mid-1500s, making it one of the oldest Magna Doodlings on record.

The Magna Doodle was plucked from a chest of toys in the museum's coatroom, formerly a child's rumpus room when the museum was home to a family of Austrian squatters in the late 1800's. Such a discovery is considered to be "a fucking mind-blower," Cooper-Hewitt Director Paul Thompson said in a telephone interview. "I didn't even know they made those things back then."

The Magna Doodle was found in a chest of toys that also included a Magnetic Wonder Whiskers toy that may have belonged to Michelangelo, and an unidentified drawing toy that involved using a solid plastic pencil to draw on a sheet of static cling film that was erased when you peeled the sheet away from the backing, Thompson said.

The museum, part of the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution, purchased the Magna Doodle within a group of five magnetic art toys in 1842, for $1. The purchase was ridiculed by some at the time, but honored as it fulfilled the wishes of then-Director Hyram McWinter, who often said "If it's artsy, I want it." By often we mean like every five minutes, it drove people crazy.

Museum scholars guessed the work might have been done by a 16th century magnetic artist Benny del Bacon, who often fobbed off his doodles on the art community of that day as "pre-surrealist deconstructionalism." Somehow it got into the wrong box and was almost sold at a museum garage sale, only to be saved by a demanding child who lived in the Cooper-Hewitt at the time.

"It's the old cliche: Renaissance master doodles a masterpiece on a child's magnetic toy, museum buys it on accident and almost sells it for nothing before snotty little Austrian kid steals it off the nickel table and hides it in his toy chest for 100 years," Thompson said.

It was first identified as a Michelangelo in April by Sir Clifford Buford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland or something, during an unauthorized surprise inspection of the Cooper-Hewitt. Buford, an Italian Renaissance scholar and air hockey freak, was rummaging around the coatroom of the design museum looking for a nice umbrella when he came across a toy chest simply labeled "Piss Off." One particular toy inside the chest caught his eye. 'My Crap, this is a Michelangelo!"' he exclaimed, not anticipating being quoted later.

While the experts agree on the artist, there is no agreement on how the doodle fits into the larger body of Michelangelo's work.

The Manimal's genitalia is only inferred, but the doodle clearly shows where they should go, said Sarah Lawrence, the museum's expert on the Italian Renaissance magnet-based arts. However, a cat doodled in the background features an alarmingly oversized penis, raising questions about Michelangelo's state of mind at the time of the doodling.

"You recognize a Michelangelo as you recognize a friend," Buford said by courier fox from Florence. "If you're familiar with a friend, and you're walking down the street, you wave to them. They may wave back, or they may duck into a shop to avoid being seen with you on the street. I rather think Michelangelo's doodle waved back. Either that, or these things here are ass cheeks; probably this Gwyneth person's. Though I'd always heard he was gay."

The Magna Doodle will go on display at the Cooper-Hewitt museum in about a year, next to a wild scratch-paper doodle Picasso did while on the phone with his mother, Thompson said.

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Well well, welcome back to the chaotic worm fart that is my life. I don't know what it is that's out there, call it God, Buddha or the force, whichever stirs your Kool-Aid, but I have discovered that it has a sense of humor.

Over the past couple of months I had worked my life into a pretty boring rut. Don't get me wrong, I still think my life is the shit stuffed between two slices of bitchin', but every once in a while I need some adventure. Now I'm not talking about a road-trip-go-see-stuff kind of adventure, but your bona fide "Indiana Jones-Grand Theft Auto-pull a badass heist like in that movie Heat" kind of adventure. You know the essentials: drugs, hookers, and all kinds of "ill shit."

It took about two seconds to decide that the best setting onto which to unleash my bad self was America's Playground. No, not the multi-colored play area I've been living in at the McDonalds down the street, because last week those bitches took my land and slapped me with a restraining order, just to put the In'jun in injury. Those imperialist dogs got their anus in an Andy just because I went in there pretending to be blind, then demanded loudly that my seeing-eye midget be given twenty Happy Meals for free to make up for my disability.

Leave it to Nevil to fuck up my wet dream.

Everything was going smoothly at first; they even put a toy in every Happy Meal. Booya. But what I hadn't noticed was that Nevil was walking in circles around me the whole time, following a bug or something, and before long his leash was coiled around my body like a goddamned python. Playing it smart, or at least blind, I kept my eyes closed through the con. If there were any witnesses, there'd be no way those rat fucks could scream out "Hey I thought that guy was supposed to be blind! He was all lookin' around and shit!" just to ruin my good time.

Then I heard something that sounded like the dude behind the counter dropping one of the Happy Meal toys on the ground. Either that, or it was an entire Mariachi band stomping on cockroaches, but I considered that possibility less likely given the situation. Either way, Nevil's instincts from his time in the wild took over and he pounced on that toy like Ted Kennedy on spilt booze. Thanks to the leash, that little shit spun me so hard I turned into a blind tornado, devastating everything in my path. My seeing-eye cane smashed against the wall and I accidentally stabbed the day-shift manager in the pills with the sharp end. And the dude did not take it well. I said that I was sorry and shit, what the hell else did he want? The worst part is, I didn't even get my Happy Meals before they chased me out of there with buckets of hot French fry oil.

The wound didn't kill that prick, but apparently it went deep enough that my face and novelty tee-shirt stuck in his memory, and now I'm permanently banned from every McDonalds by old Ronald himself. I can't go within a mile of any of their establishments without risking extradition to the Royal Court of McDonald in Paraguay for a life sentence of breaking rocks and making apple pie pockets. Those fuckers even put up police sketches of me in every restaurant they own. Lousy sketches, too. Who am I, Jesse James? Now what in the hell am I supposed to do for food?

Thanks to the McDonalds incident my whole caper had to be moved to Las Vegas, which is still cool, but can't hold a flame to that play-pen. But since I was planning on letting it all hang out in Vegas, I needed to find someone to watch Nevil for me while I was gone. It's never fun to lose a midget in the city that never sleeps, plus he's far too sensitive to be exposed to 99% of the shit that goes down in that mafia wonderland. Finding a midget sitter was harder than I'd expected, because I really didn't want to pay anyone and I had no idea when I would be coming back. One by one, my neighbors slammed their doors in my face like I was a naked Jehovah's Witness selling used condoms. Man did that bring back memories.

Down but damn sure not out, I dreamt up the perfect solution to my problem: I took Nevil out behind my apartment complex and chained him to a fire hydrant. And I didn't pay the hydrant shit. Who knows, maybe some sympathetic pedestrian stopped and fed him salad croutons or something while I was gone, stranger things have happened. "Good work Mickey, way to kill two birds with one stone," I said out loud. Then I hopped into the back of a pickup truck driven by some Mexican who looked like he was headed to Vegas, and prepared to blow the world's mind.

When I reached the city of sin, I was in high spirits from all the fresh air and a can of boot black I'd found in the pickup's bed. "I'm young, relatively healthy, and ready for what the night will bring," I thought to myself. Thirteen minutes later I was in a strip club, and I didn't come out for two days. Mainly because I spent all my money in that first half hour, after which the mentally unstable-looking bouncers stapled me to the wall in the men's room. They used me as a human spring-loaded billy club dummy for about nine hours, then it was decided that I had repaid my debt.

I could have left sooner than I did, but it took some time for my fractured shins to heal up enough for me to drag myself out through the bathroom window. It was a tight squeeze, but enough of my ribs were broken that I was able to squirm right on through. Just let it be known for the record that I think something is wrong with my spine, because every time I step on my left foot I piss my pants, then barf up dry-roasted peanuts.

I couldn't think too clearly at that time because from all evidence my skull was cracked, and a piece of my brain was dangling carelessly out of one of my ears. While I was trying to remember who I was, what language I spoke and why my feet were covered in dead purple cow-flesh, some homeless crackhead wandered upon my mutilated body and started poking me with what was left of an umbrella. He was eyeing me like I was going to be in his next homemade snuff film, which is why it surprised me when he leaned down and put a crack pipe to my lips, while motioning for me to inhale.

With all the breath I could muster, I forced my torn diaphragm and punctured lung to fill with the thick white smoke. This guy must have been the Yoda of homeless crack addicts, because in minutes I was on my feet, and feeling better than ever. And I do mean ever. After a few more tokes I felt like a million bucks, and all my limbs were working again. But when I looked up to thank my crank-fueled angel of mercy, that little ninja fuck had vanished like a welfare check. Oh well, off to face the city once again.

Feeling rejuvenated, I wandered into the cheapest motel that I could find, which was an empty dumpster behind the Golden Nugget. My trip hadn't started off exactly as I'd expected, but I still had big plans for this monument to man's greed. Mickey Hanes was born to take advantage of a town where the only moral is that if you have enough money, you can do whatever the fuck you want. For the first time in three days, I closed my eyes and rested.

In the morning I awoke to the all-too-familiar sound of a dump truck lifting my dumpster into the crisp morning air. With a quickness I dismounted the dumpster using skills I didn't know I had. I floated through the air almost in slow motion, graceful as a ballet dancer dodging blowdarts. If an angel had seen the grace and elegance of my execution, he would have pissed himself.

The landing, however, was a completely different can of beans. Cirque du Soleil doesn't have shit on me. Caught up completely in my kick-ass performance, I forgot a small but important detail... the landing. I remembered the landing only in retrospect, after the sidewalk tried to shove itself dow

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Talk about your shitty weekends. I've heard of Tijuana coke mule vacations that went better than this. What can go wrong at a parade, right? Try everything.

It all started out well enough. Nice day, sun's out, chicks in majorette outfits, right? Sweet. Couple of brewskies with the guys, taking in the sights. Families are out with their kids, which is always a sweet reminder that you're not saddled with any little snot goblins of your own. Old people there too, reminding you how great it is not to be them. Could have been the perfect day. Then this fucking clown shows up and it all goes to hell.

For the record: Sure, I was making fun of his poofy pink hair and all that, but ain't those dudes supposed to be all jolly and shit? Not this guy. As soon as I started clowning on his tired purple dot pants, that freakshow flew into a berserk clown rage. That dude went all postal clown on my ass. I'm telling you, this was one clown who wasn't secure in his sexuality.

It's not like I've never had my ass kicked before. Meter maids, mailmen, Tommy Frithy's auntie May—they all know how to bring it. But this clown was something different. Normally when I'm getting my dork kicked in, eventually my pathetic screams are enough to make the assailant lay off for a sec, at least long enough for me to grab the fender of a passing car and be dragged to safety. But not this clown. That dude was enjoying this shit.

I'd be at the pearly gates right now, explaining to Saint Peter why I had a big floppy shoe stuck up my ass if it weren't for that ice cream truck that rolled up on Mr. Clown right as he was about to take his belt off. Thank God that clown had a weakness for Dilly bars, that's all I can say. While he was two-fisting those motherfuckers like some kind of refugee fresh out of an ice creamless desert, I managed to drag my broken ass over to an open manhole and flop down inside. By the time he realized where I'd gone it was too late—no way was he going to risk getting his big pink afro-wig wet down in that sewer.

And by the way, thanks for standing up for me, guys. I don't know what was worse, having a big overweight clown miming anal intercourse with my limp, bleeding body in the middle of the street, or having to hear you guys cracking up and making catcalls the whole time. I might have even forgiven that indignity if you guys hadn't taken the clown out for drinks afterwards. I guess I know what kind of friends I've got. The "for shit" variety.

And to add insult to injury and total humiliation, now the city's suing my ass for ruining the parade. And I keep getting letters from some jackass who says his kid is afraid of clowns now, thanks to me. But you won't believe the fucking topper of them all. That fucking clown himself sent me a scary-assed postcard the other day, with a menacing picture of himself on the front and a smear of my own blood on the back.

When I find out which one of you jokers gave him my address, you're gonna taste my cane, bitch.

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