{"id":1016,"date":"2011-10-13T19:59:30","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T00:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2011-10-13T19:59:30","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T00:59:30","slug":"50-foot-log-sprinkled-with-glitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=1016","title":{"rendered":"50 Foot Log Sprinkled with Glitter&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/GRPR087.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1017\" title=\"GRPR087.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/GRPR087.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"394\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Press<\/em>,\u00a0October 8,\u00a02011<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that I can\u2019t be snobby. I take a very dim view of mass-produced light beers. My musical tastes run purposely to the unique and away from widely popular. (The new Ben Folds CD arrived yesterday, and I\u2019m beyond thrilled.) And even at my poorest stage in life I could never bring myself to buy the store-brand toaster pasties in lieu of the opulent deliciousness of Kellogg\u2019s PopTarts.<\/p>\n<p>But when it comes to art, I have no tolerance for the snobs &#8212; you know, like art critics. The ones who, whether art world educated or self-certified, feel the need to school everybody about what is beyond our ability to understand and what is beneath contempt. (There is no middle ground.) They have come out every year for ArtPrize, but this year they came out with a vengeance. And it\u2019s not as if they don\u2019t have some good points &#8212; heck, even Rick DeVos admitted that there was a lot of \u201ccrazy crap\u201d strewn about Grand Rapids. It\u2019s the snarky, pretentious way with which they generally delivered it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, as a supposed artist who sometimes struggles mightily with the actual art part, I guess I\u2019m predisposed to take a punk rock view of this. Which is, if somebody feels they have something to say, then they should bang it out. If you\u2019re passionate, it\u2019s worth creating. It may not turn out. In fact, it likely won\u2019t turn out, but you shouldn\u2019t let somebody else\u2019s certification criteria stop you. As Ben Folds says, you don\u2019t want to have regrets:<\/p>\n<p>I thought about the hours wasted<br \/>\nWatching TV, drinking beer<br \/>\nI thought about the things I thought about<br \/>\nUntil immobilized with fear<br \/>\nAnd all the great ideas I had<br \/>\nAnd how we just made fun<br \/>\nOf those who had the guts to try and fail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press,\u00a0October 8,\u00a02011 It\u2019s not that I can\u2019t be snobby. I take a very dim view of mass-produced light beers. My musical tastes run purposely to the unique and away from widely popular. (The new Ben Folds CD arrived yesterday, and I\u2019m beyond thrilled.) And even at my poorest stage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}