Making Flippy Floppy

Gotta go gotta go gotta go right now...

You hold it and hold it, but eventually you will need relief. You reluctantly fight your way through the drunken crowds and make your way to the barren, prison-like hell chamber. Yes, it's the men's room at Mik-n-Mac's, and on a typical weekend night it is covered in half an inch of piss, puke, and other body fluids. Broken beer bottles mingle gently with ciggie butts in dark forboding corners.

To thier credit, the girls at Mik-n-Mac's have made several failed attempts at ritzing up this hellhole, thier efforts literally destroyed by the bad testosterone moments of the neanderthals who frequent the place. I wasn't surprised when the cute little shelves installed kindly above the urinals to hold your beer while you took care of your business were found ripped to the floor, or when the mirror above the sink was smashed again, despite the inch of safety plastic meant to protect it. It was typical when the door to the stall was ripped off its hinges and the ceramic lids to both toilets smashed to smithereens on a random busy Saturday summer night. And recently, we hit a new low when the mirror right inside the door suddenly disapppeared, the remaining chunks of missing wall swifltly painted over in that mental-ward shade of light blue-green, leaving us boys with no way to check oursleves out on the way back into the heaving crowd. Even I was was phased, however, when the soap dispenser was karate-kicked into oblivion, leaving us to deal with our own (and everyone else's) frighteningly unwashed hands all night long.

However, we could look at it in a different light. Perhaps the Mik-n-Mac's men's room is really just a big Modern Art installation waiting to happen. The more those a-holes try and destroy the place, the closer they get to creating a masterpiece of urban blight. Every hole punched in the drywall could be viewed as contribution toward the ongoing project. Like Duchamp's famous urinal, it's an example of anything possibly being percieved as a work of art if you look at in the right light. And so, hold your nose, into the dimly lit "gallery" we go...

Untitled #1 (Black Ink Smear On Wall)

Untitled #2 (Former Spot of Next-to-Door Mirror)

Untitled #3 (Plaster Where Hole Was Punched in Wall)

Untitled #4 (Former Spot of Mirror Above Sink)

Untitled #5 (Overhead Light with Ambient Spittle)

Untitled #6 (Exposed Wall Where Urinal Was Destroyed and Replaced)

Untitled #7 (Petrified Double-Stick Tape Above Right Toilet)

Untitled #8 (Mucus-Covered Pressed Board Covering Mystery Hole)

Untitled #9 (Gouge in Left Stall Wall)

Untitled #10 (Toilet-Paper Roll with Padlock)

Untitled #11 (Constant Overflow of Used Paper Towels)