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Nobody wants their child tortured at the hands of a fat middle aged clown, or their neighborhood prostitute’s pieces paired with mint jelly for a midnight snack. We do not want our thatch roof burned by a band of rabid Mongols or our twins chloroformed and dissected for the sake of SS curiosity, but we’ll gladly watch any History Channel special on the subject.
It is true that we don’t actually want these things to happen to us; but were these fellas to drop out of history we would be reduced to cul de sac gossip and Kathy Lee Gifford. Not to mention the Catholic religion, that old monkey may have shriveled and fallen off of backs en masse without the tender waltz of the inquisition.
So it is with delicious joy that I recollect the celebration of darkness at Masthead’s “A Nation of Evil Men” curated by angry talent Sam Heimer and sponsored by printmaster artist Shawn Hileman.
  
The show was a chocolate box filled to the brim with Darwinian variety and refreshingly diverse tastes for depravity. A cool milky skin blushes the surface of Joka’s Vaginal Hitler, misleading the populous from the juicy domination of her bloody center. Strawberry cream swirls hypnotic in the eyes of Jeffro Kilpatric’s Rasputin, demanding you remove your clothes and your morals. The lesser known HH Holmes comes amidst a sugary snow storm bearing your room key to asphyxiation in a terrifically hallowing painting by Mike Wohlberg. I moved about the room consuming one after the other, ravenous, like a fat girl on Friday night watching Braveheart by herself.
It was in the eyes of Sam Heimer’s Walt Disney that the heart of the show bubbled out of the oil. Old Walt earned his place on the wall for a laundry list of reasons other than Disney Land. But, Disney Land stands highest on his pedestal, in perpetuity, dictating you not look past the plastic. Believe these toilets flush into pink taffy and the Donkey handler isn’t boning Eddie when the Small World ride shuts down.
  
However, it is the support of evil which lies at the root of its greatest successes. We are the nation of evil men. Not just America or Serial Killers, but us, the ever ambitious human with our “more for me philosophy”. So, we had better embrace it; and buy a princess outfit while we’re at it
You still have a week to go on this multi-artist ghost ride at 340 Brown Stree (2nd floor) and to make the closing reception on Sat. 26th at 6PM. The prints are undeniably affordable and the Heimer brothers are selling a limited run of the screen printed book “Dirt Work”.
For the sake of all that is good in the world… go celebrate the bad.
  
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