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This birthday card from Valerie is one of my favorite Dali paintings,
Suburbs of a Paranoiac-Critical Town: Afternoon on the Outskirts of European History. If you look closely you’ll notice my face on Gala’s body. (Kinda spooky if you ask me) The structure in the cube on the left is an homage to the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. He influenced the surrealists for obvious reasons.

I was making a delivery to the Westport Sheraton hotel one day and was surprised to find the entire first floor was a gallery of large de Chirico prints. It seems like an odd choice for a hotel. If you get a chance check it out.

I was hoping we could sneak past my birthday without anyone noticing but Valerie had other ideas. We went to Friendly’s, the scene of the crime for last year’s surprise party. Somehow we ended up at The Shanti in Soulard. The band were mostly percussionists and 3 belly dancers. There must have been at least 10 people in the group and the bar is tiny.

The Shanti is probably St. Louis’ best club for live entertainment right now. William Stage met up with us a couple of weeks ago to see Red Ass Jones and the Gold Bondsmen. They are another group that’s so large you wouldn’t think they’d fit. I wanted to check them out because my friend Wren is a member. He's the tattoo artist who put the wings on my ankles.

It turns out another buddy of mine Mike Long is in the band. I almost didn’t recognize him. He had a full beard that gave a hillbilly effect which is appropriate for the band. This is strange because he comes from a punk/power pop background. Wren and Mike fronted the band. Their material ranges from Bob Wills to The Cover of the Riverfront Times. They’re funny as Hell.

Mike is calling himself Shorty Long. His son plays banjo and his name really is Miles Long. Man I want to be in a band again!

Valerie had an old oil painting of mine framed as a gift. I think I painted it around 1979. It’s called “After the Party” and was a jab at the Abstract Expressionists. I tried to go them one further. They wanted to bring the art to the surface of the canvas. The art isn’t representational; the subject is brought right to the surface of the canvas.

Mine is meant to look like the aftermath of a successful party. A total mess complete with a footprint. The footprint was a response to Jackson Pollack’s handprint on the painting Lavender Mist. It was meant to be displayed on the floor. The subject isn’t the surface of the canvas but us standing on it, outside of the canvas. Now it’s permanently enshrined in a frame in glass and hanging on our wall.

Were all the Abstract Expressionists physically abusive to their lovers?