Art Thieves Steal The Turd

mboldened by the recent broad-daylight swiping of legendary Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s famous paintings The Scream and Madonnas from Oslo, Norway’s Munch Museum (which is a terrible place to wander into stoned, but a hilarious name for a museum regardless of whether you pronounce it “Munch” or “Munk”), thieves in New York this week made off with The Turd, a controversial piece of conceptual art that was until very recently housed in the Museum of Modern Art in downtown Manhattan.

Upon hearing that there had been a daring daylight heist at the MoMA, terrified museum officials initially feared the worst.

“I almost shit my pants,” admitted curator Vaughn Cammels. “They could have made off with a Van Gogh, Monet or Picasso, priceless artworks which never could have been replaced. Those first few seconds were like a mini-nightmare.”

The missing piece, valued by museum officials as “impossible to sell,” consisted of a white porcelain turd on a dinner plate. Some museum employees were relieved to find out that R.H. Hiddelstein’s obscure piece of protest art from 1982 had been stolen, rather than one of the museum’s many easier-to-appreciate masterworks. Though understandably distraught over the theft, many have been looking at the bright side, pointing out that they can finally clean that spot on the wall. For years, few had dared to move The Turd, because none could tell if it was really porcelain or just a real turd painted white.

When asked what police were doing to catch the crooks, police chief Harold Almney insisted that the case had been given appropriate priority and that the police would start at nothing to bring these crooks to justice.

“The Turd is a crucial piece in understanding the development of modern sculpture,” explained art historian Checky Brazelton. “Without it, we would never have been blessed with any of the several related masterpieces that followed, including Bradnell’s Lung Chunk or Dolenski’s Snot on Toast. This is a major loss for the art community.”

“The what?” queried a surprised Lindsay Sommers, an intern at the MoMA. “Somebody stole that thing? I was using it as an ashtray on my breaks.”

Irregardless of the opinion of some part-time art critics, the artist Hiddelstein has been distraught since learning of the theft, vowing not to rest and planning to leave work on his latest sculpture-in-progress, the man-sized Shithead, on hiatus until the bandits can be brought to justice.

“You cannot understand my pain unless you have ever lost a child,” explained Hiddelstein after this reporter suggested he could knock out another piece comparable to The Turd if given twenty minutes and a plate of bran muffins. When asked if he wasn’t just being pretentious, Hiddelstein answered with a piece of interpretive dance that was way over the commune’s head.

When asked why the thieves left numerous priceless works of art hanging on the walls while making off with Hiddelstein’s obscure piece, authorities speculate that the thieves may have been either huge Hiddelstein fans, complete art novices, or just absolute morons. Others have speculated that the thieves came for a Van Gogh or Monet, but panicked when the non-silent alarms went off and grabbed The Turd in a hurry on their way out the door, so as not to leave empty-handed. However, a thorough inspection of the dumpsters outside surrounding buildings failed to lend credence to this theory.

“This is the new face of modern art theft,” explained face of modern art theft expert Carson Faulkner. “It’s brash, in-your-face, and usually pretty stupid. No longer are we living in the days of your father’s art thief, a suave motherfucker squeezing in through some high window with suction cups sewn into his gloves, limboing his way through a maze of laser tripwires and slipping a priceless masterpiece out if its frame using a high-tech black-market silica spray. Now it’s just a couple of retards barging in with a shotgun and making off with whatever’s easiest to carry, even if it’s a worthless piece of modern shwag or the trashcan over by the men’s room. It’s sad, really.”

Until new leads materialize, local authorities are scanning art auction listings for mention of the sculpture, and keeping an eye on eBay in case the thieves get really desperate. While there are several turds currently for sale on the auction site, and liberal examples of bad modern art, none yet appear to be the missing piece.

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Greetings, communistas! Apologies for the long gap in writing, things have been moving too fast and furious here at commune headquarters to allow much time for reflection. I just realized the other day that I’ve been wearing the same pair of socks for three days, and trust me, I have showered in that time. So hopefully that adequately reflects the level of hubbub going on around here lately.

No update from the last four months would be complete without mentioning the Gnarlap. Sometime around week 11 it became clear there was some kind of mythical beast living in the crawl space underneath my mother’s house. Not the basement, mind you, but the crawl space beneath the basement. Don’t ask me why we have a crawl space under our basement, faithful commune reader, I’m not a damned architect, and the police have already pursued that line of questioning to its fruitless conclusion. Just rest assured that it is there, and there is some kind of troll-like monster living in there and making a lot of noise and generating some kind of awful smell that Griswald Dreck is convinced is unmistakably the stench of a Gnarlap web. Raoul Dunkin was skeptical of this until the day he came home and found that the Gnarlap had eaten all of his Chicken in a Biskits, at which point he was convinced, and enraged.

As you might imagine, an exterminator was called, and as you might also imagine, if you’re particularly imaginative or an especial fan of the mid-1980’s series Amazing Stories, after the exterminator disappeared into the crawl space he was never heard from again. Ivan Nacutchacokov suggested that the exterminator just took my "imaginary creature removal" money and laughed his way to the bank, but I attribute that skepticism entirely to Ivan’s irrational hatred of the Vietnamese. It was obvious to everyone else that the poor man was eaten by the Gnarlap.

And if you thought running an internationally unknown news outlet out of your mother’s basement on a budget that’s not even enough to buy shoe strings was tough, just imagine trying to pull off that miracle while there’s some kind of horrible damned monster living under your house and eating people and snacks willy-nilly as it sees fit, not to mention stinking up the joint like Andre the Giant’s jock strap. It has been trying, to say the least. I’m tempted to apologize to our readership for the slow pace of recent updates, however none of that would be necessary if the Gnarlap hadn’t eaten two entire issues worth of content I had printed neatly inside the long-forgotten Hello Kitty notebook I found among my sister’s old things in the basement. If anyone already knew that Gnarlaps find spiral-bound representations of Japanime kittens delicious, they neglected to post this factoid on the internet.

I’m also inclined to beg the pardon of our long-suffering readership for the complete lack of Griswald Dreck output since Mr. Dreck rejoined our winning team, but somebody has to guard the crawlspace hole while the rest of us sleep, and we theorize that Dreck’s long stories about who invented cotton candy are the only thing lulling the Gnarlap into a non-commune-eating stupor.

But enough about that! On with the updates: As you’ve probably noticed, we have a new reporter on our staff, the aptly-named R.J. Handsomelots, who is indeed lots of handsome. In case you’re worried, don’t be, it’s not gay at all to say that. He really is that good looking. I met Mr. Handsomelots while buying gas at one of our insanely-overpriced local gas marts, and the fact that he knew how to write in cursive was all it took to convince me that he had what it takes to continue the fine commune tradition of excellence in journalism for no pay whatsoever.

I also figured out where the hell Red Bagel was getting those Book Revolt entries from, at long last. Turns out if you send a money order for $5 to a post office box in Bulgaria, Bulgarian wordsmiths will write you a book about whatever the hell you want in six days or less. God bless Bulgaria.

So, as you can see, we’re bravely plugging away here at the commune, bloodied but not humbled, afraid to go in the basement at night but not afraid to bring you the finest in American uber-journalism on a wildly unpredictable schedule. It will take more than a Gnarlap to stop us, commune readers. Unless the Gnarlap eats the entire staff while we sleep. Actually that would probably stop us pretty effectively.

Oh, shit, yeah, I also tracked down Rok Finger and Orson Welch. So there’s that.

Zincerely,
Emil Zender

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The Miramax film based on my life is finally being released, now that Miramax is falling apart on the inside. They let the film sit on a shelf for a couple of years while they waited for another national disaster so they could silently release it to the theaters unnoticed, like they did Glitter. I guess things have been too good, since the mama company is making them release it within the next year or they're going to have to pay me out the money for the contract I signed.

I tried to get one of the Weinsteins on the phone at Miramax, but they had already left the company. I did get a Steinwein on the phone, but he said he worked in the kitchen and didn't know shit. He had seen my movie, though, he was part of the focus group they showed it to. He was the focus group, actually. He thought it needed more ketchup.

The next guy I got on the phone knew more. He said they were going to take the film to Cannes next year. Or was it Cans, the strip club down the block? I've been to one of them and can't remember which. They said they had a lot of hope it would win the audience choice award, the Itty Bitty Titty Twister statue, but they were worried my tits were too big.

I know enough about it to know it was a troubled production from day one. After I signed away all the rights to my life, they said there was no way the production couldn't make money. But I showed them. They went $200 million over budget. It was the worst script William Goldman ever turned in, a studio insider said. It may have been Goldie Willman, now that I think of it… I met her at Cans.

And casting me was no easy task. They asked Freddy Fender to do it, and he punched them out. The director said he acted too well anyway, no one who knew me would believe the performance. They managed to cast Hal Linden as my dad, which is a much easier role to play since no one knows what he looks like. For me, they eventually went with Robin Williams in severe make-up. He said he had to get into the make-up chair earlier each morning than when he was filming Mrs. Doubtfire. I didn't like being kicked out of the make-up chair when I was in a deep sleep, either, and they wouldn't hear any excuses about how I had locked myself out of my apartment, which didn't exist, but they didn't know that.

I hear the director couldn't decide if it were a comedy or a tragedy, so he made a tragicomedy, even though the studio says he wasn't trying to. Think Doogie Howser, M.D., mixed with a little School House Rock. My movie's nothing like that, but I love to think about stuff like that. A 16-year-old doctor who goes around telling people how bills become laws in song. That's the best idea I've ever had, and my mom agrees.

If the movie hits big, though, don't expect me to change. I'll basically be myself, except much richer and probably well-bathed. So yeah, I suppose I'll change significantly. I can't wait. By this time next year, hopefully, everyone will know the name Taylor Hutch. They decided not to go with Alamo Cruise—"too Jewish," said Steinwein.

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