A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels, Joan Didion wrote. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire. Read more about Kinkade... Thomas Kinkade's artistic legacy up for grabs.
Tag: Americana
You know you’re in Texas when
--when the bas relief of the Dumas TX motel waffle iron is oddly asymmetric. You study the strange edges in the dim light of the breakfast area with a growing suspicion, but flipping the heated iron over, following the instructions, you see someone's presumed you wanted a waffle the image of Texas.
Big Rock Candy Mountain unsafe for kids
Here was a true bit of American folk wisdom, Harry McClintock's everyman philosophy whose context was whitewashed for the sake of children and the Protestant work ethic. The original lyrics of the hobo's nirvana, Big Rock Candy Mountain, where omitted or reformed, are reprinted in bold here. BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN Harry McClintock, circa 1890 One evening as the sun went down And the jungle fires were burning, Down the track came a hobo hiking, And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning. I'm headed for a land that's far away Besides the crystal fountains. So come with me, we'll go and see The Big Rock Candy Mountains. In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, There's a land that's fair and bright, Where the handouts grow on bushes And you sleep out every night. Where the boxcars all are empty And the sun shines every day And the birds and the bees And the cigarette trees The lemonade springs Where the bluebird sings In the Big Rock Candy Mountains. In the Big Rock Candy Mountains All the cops have wooden legs And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs. The farmers' trees are full of fruit And the barns are full of hay. Oh I'm bound to go Where there ain't no snow Where the rain don't fall The winds don't blow In the Big Rock Candy Mountains. In the Big Rock Candy Mountains You never change your socks And the little streams of alcohol Come trickling down the rocks. The brakemen have to tip their hats And the railway bulls are blind. There's a lake of stew And of whiskey too You can paddle all around it In a big canoe In the Big Rock Candy Mountains In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, The jails are made of tin. And you can walk right out again, As soon as you are in. There ain't no short-handled shovels, No axes, saws nor picks, I'm bound to stay Where you sleep all day, Where they hung the jerk That invented work In the Big Rock Candy Mountains. .... I'll see you all this coming fall In the Big Rock Candy Mountains .... The punk rolled up his big blue eyes And said to the jocker, "Sandy, I've hiked and hiked and wandered too, But I ain't seen any candy. I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore And I'll be damned if I hike any more To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."