Who made the mousetrap?

Who? Who?

Hiram Maxim made the mousetrap.

That’s who.



Hiram had a great creative mind.

In 1881 Hiram visited the Paris Electrical Exhibition.
A man told him, “If you want to make a lot of money,
invent something that will enable these Europeans
to cut each other's throats with greater facility."

Hiram did. He invented the world’s first automatic portable machine-gun.



It could fire 500 rounds a minute, as much as 100 rifles.

Hiram’s invention was soon used in Africa with marvelous results.

A small group of brave English soldiers could employ
the Maxim Gun to mow line after line of unruly warriors
desperate to save their homes from destruction.



Thousands could be slaughtered in an astonishingly
safe and efficient manner.

Hurrah!

Queen Victoria was much impressed with this American inventor
from Maine and his splendid weapon.

She made him a knight.



Hiram kept improving his invention.

It was a complicated business.
There were problems regarding the weapon’s weight,
its recoil, the need to keep it cool.

But Hiram was quite ingenious.
Men around the world appreciated this.



When they were ready for their Great War,
variations of Hiram's machine gun
could be found on all sides.

It made a brilliant addition to a pointless conflict
in which millions butchered one another
in new and unparalleled ways!



Hiram also invented a light bulb, a flying machine
and dozens of other devices.

But his most famous invention would be his apparatus
for the mass extermination of humans.

Even the mousetrap,

while quite wonderful,

could not compete.

SurfingtheSpectacle has been sluggish
in our entry production of late.
We have been working on wondrous projects
unheard of in this world or any other.

And that has taken a toll.



But it's important you understand that we will return.

We will make changes in the sidebar. We will make new entries.



It will come slowly at first. And then faster.
And then faster than lightning from the heavens.

Until each hour of each day brings
a glorious new spectacle entry.



You must trust us on these things.

For remember in this year or any other...



We are with you always.



[Our thanks to the pioneering artist Larry Van Pelt
for his astonishing "With You Always" drawing series.]

Perhaps our deepest desires float blindly along
in the dark, adrift from our conscious mind.

Perhaps from time to time these desires merge
with the secret dreams of other dreamers...

And rise to the surface like lava, taking ashen shape
in visions most sublime.



These images may appear as the product of this artist or that.

But we might rightly consider such visions as nothing less
than the aching manifestations of our collective unconscious.

Our own hopes, wishes, fantasies, unknown even to ourselves,
now thrust into the open with the brazen swagger of truth.



It is a mark of this world that the expectation of justice
shocks the imagination.

Justice?!

Justice becomes a clever joke among clever people,
but no one does much laughing.



Still the longing lingers.

And the hidden hope, once exposed, seems awfully...


Sweeeeeeet.



Book 'em, Danno.

And get them out of my sight.

The artist’s subjects are enormous.

He is fond of fleshy souls and depicts them in all their immensity.



Born in Columbia in 1932, Fernando Botero
took the figures of his boyhood and his imagination,
and inflated them, endowing his dancers, husbands,
bullfighters and lovers with comic and mythic proportion.



The images are widely beloved. Botero’s art hangs in museums
around the world. He is incredibly famous. He is incredible wealthy.
He has made thousands of paintings, each one worth
more than most make in a lifetime.



“I like to paint pleasant things…All of my life, by conviction,
I did subjects that were rather pleasant.”



As a young artist, Botero left Columbia for New York.
In the 13 years he lived there, he painted only his private Columbia.
He moved to Paris and resided there for more than 30 years.
But Paris was never his subject. Only the quaint, charming
figures from his mythic Columbia made the canvas.



All this time, the real Columbia was mired in disaster.
There were massacres, kidnappings and torture.
Guerillas, paramilitary groups, government forces and
vicious drug cartels vied for control. Life was cheap.
200,000 Columbians were murdered while Botero painted.

But decade after decade, the popular artist portrayed only a sweet,
whimsical world of perpetual innocence.



Then something happened.

We do not know what.

All we know is that as he approached his 70th year,
the artist began painting things most unpleasant.



He had heard and read the news reports.
He had imagined the countless horrors of his homeland.
Now he took paint to canvas.





The fat images were no longer funny.



The world famous artist did not sell these paintings.
He gave them to the people of Columbia,
donating the work to the National Museum of Columbia.

Botero seemed to be changing.



When he read of the crimes at Abu Ghraib,
he said he felt he must do something.
So he began to draw. He began to paint.



His prisoners carry the voluminous corpulence that is his trademark,
but now they wear their flesh as a kind of stark testament
to their tortures. The images are emphatic, insistent.



“I wanted to recreate the atmosphere in the prison with scenes
that were not scenes in the photos, to make some idea of the feeling,
so that I could communicate some idea of the horrors that were going on…
In painting there is this concentration of emotion through time,
leaving out everything that doesn’t concern the subject,
and this makes the images in painting have special meaning….

Art has the capacity to make us remember a situation for a long time.”



The artist who found fame and fortune creating
amusing figures from a quaint land of the past
now turns to our world and our time,
and says terrible and unjust events must not go forgotten.



“It has to be remembered….I could not stay silent. The power of art
is to make you remember something. I hope that will happen with my work.”

A book carried within us.



Go here for the entry on Patrick Power.