In 1978, Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy Spungen with a knife. This is going to be something like that.
Welcome to Layer Tennis, where today we spit blood, cheek by jowl. The big match-up this afternoon is between Sam Brown and Ted McGrath, artists of a certain punk covenant. As illustrators they share an art-brut style, but one that masks finesse. It's not outsider or naive so much as deliberate aesthetic planning, like the kind you hear in a perfect three-minute, four-chord song. What do they have in common? They make art look easy. And they both drink turpentine at supper.
Assuming you've seen Explodingdog before (if you haven't, I've got a video you'll also like of a kid swinging a light saber), you know that no one else does anything quite like Sam. He is the Edward Gorey of the web. Meanwhile, assuming you've picked up a magazine in the last couple years, you've seen McGrath's illustrations, one part Crumb, two parts Darger.
Punk isn't something you state on your taxes. It is the doing, not the declaring of punk that counts. But aside from their portfolios, to prove to you their punkness before the show starts, I asked our contestants to fill out a questionnaire --nothing says punk like a questionnaire-- so we could judge who's punker and maybe get an indication of how the match will go.
Band: "The Clash hands down, unless you want to get into snarky, debatable record-jerk territory and then I'd say Television."
Singer: "I'm a classicist so it's gotta be Poly Styrene or Joe Strummer."
Beverage-of-Choice: "Schliiiiiiiiiz... or white-out."
Favorite Punk Moment: "A 1995, three-way knife fight with members of Oasis and Fugazi in a Hardees parking lot outside of Lincoln, NE."
Superpower: "The ability to become living propane"
Band: "Black Flag"
Singer: "Ian Curtis"
Beverage-of-Choice: "Old, questionable coffee, reheated on a broken gas stove"
Favorite Punk Moment: "I like the music, but I am trying very hard to live a quiet, suburban Connecticut life. I don't have many punk moments. But I honked and gave the finger to some old people who cut me off this morning while I was driving my daughter to school."
Superpower: "Sleep of apathy. If you make me care too much, I take a nap."
Hmm. "Sleep of apathy" gets its brains scooped out with a beveled dildo by "living propane." But I should confess some bias: Sam and I worked together back in the previous century, at one of civilization's first web-design firms. I know Sam; Sam is a friend of mine. Surely the hidden powers of Sam's Connecticut-napping deserve a second chance?
I thought to myself: what would happened if I ask them to draw this one out? Having never met, what if each guy drew the other as they imagined them as opponents?
Ted McGrath as imagined by Sam Brown
Sam Brown as imagined by Ted McGrath
People, this is going to get unpleasant, and naps are not going to make the grade. Someone fetch me a puppy head to snack on. Unleash the beastly!
Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of The Morning News. His first novel, "You Lost Me There", is coming out soon from Riverhead Books.
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Congratulations to Mig Reyes, Layer Tennis Season 3 Champion.
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